No, this isn't abandoned. I promised, remember?

Chapter Thirty Four

'Natural Disasters' Rebel Trio Confirmed,
Dark Object in Gringotts?

Late in the afternoon yesterday, the office of the Daily Prophet received notice from the Head Goblin of Gringotts himself asking for a single reporter and photographer team to arrive as swiftly as possible to the bank. Just after I arrived, the goblin in question exited from the back office area with three mysterious characters; one cloaked in red, another in blue, and the third in a silvery grey. I caught sight of them and knew that rumors swirling about were true: the Natural Disasters do exist and are even more intimidating in person than previously made out to be. Alas, this wasn't the only exciting thing discovered during the meeting. This rebel group had, earlier in the day, informed the bank that a dark object of You-Know-Who's resided within one of their high security vaults. Upon investigating, this accusation turned out to be true and the item was confiscated. As with all high security vault sweeps, the public has to be informed. This will likely cause a panic among the general public, but let it be known, according to the Head Goblin himself, the problem has been taken care of. The last time a vault of such a magnitude was searched without warning was nearly sixteen years ago just before the first downfall… [Continued on pg. 6]

Cecilia looked up into the faces of her companions squished around the small table with a grin. "Half of the front page? Not too shabby." She held it up to show off the picture plastered across the front page. Ragnok was standing proudly behind a teller's booth displaying a small golden cup. Harry, Cecilia and Draco flanked the goblin under their guises of the Natural Disasters. Smirks and the tips of their noses were the only features seen in the photograph, their hoods were pulled low to cover the rest; done with the purposeful intention of mocking Voldemort. The cup in the picture was currently lying, forgotten and destroyed, on the makeshift table they were surrounding.

Nearly a week had passed since the actual day that they ventured into the bank. The backlash of Voldemort's anger had understandably left Harry and Cecilia incapacitated for a day. They had been prepared for said anger, or as prepared as one could be for a megalomaniac's rage manifested as pain in their body. Once they awoke though, they simply gritted their teeth and tolerated it because, in the end, it was worth it. Outside of themselves, there remained only one horcrux and Voldemort knew this as well. It meant only one thing: he was planning something, something that would lure them out. Voldemort was predictable in that way. His immortality was at stake and he would be willing to do whatever it takes to save it.

Slowly but surely, days crept by, and yet Voldemort remained out of sight, but not out of mind. Voldemort and his plans were constantly on minds of the occupants of the tent. It was unusual that the dark wizard would wait so long for a confrontation when his immortality, his empire was at stake. Harry reported flashes of images when he risked a glance into Voldemort's mind. A battle was planned, date still unknown, but in a well-populated area. It was brilliant, really, because he had figured out their weaknesses. They wouldn't sit back and allow civilians to be injured. This uncertainty had all of them on edge; few hours went by without an argument or tense silences and the comic relief the article provided a much needed break.

Cecilia made sure the others were truly engrossed in the newspaper before silently lifting herself from her seat and retreating to her room, preferring the solitary silence over the tense silences and arguments to sort through her jumbled thoughts. Thoughts seemed to tare through her mind at such a rapid pace that she barely had time to comprehend what she thought before a new thought pushed the other aside and replaced it. Some things, though, always returned; things that seemed to be important enough to be addressed before the war whose end was looming nearer and nearer and with it, potentially the end of her life. Sure, thinking of her death was rather morbid, but since her encounter with Malfoy senior, it was something she had come to accept. She may have had knowledge of a future that she then prevented, but she was still human, very human indeed. The increasingly common pains running the length of the pasty white scar across her torso was a constant reminder of that vulnerability.

After pulling her auburn hair into a ponytail, she poked her head out of the sheet hung up to section her 'room' from the rest of the tent. Satisfied that the others were still occupied with the newspaper and pointless chatter, she plopped on her bed and leaned against the headboard. She listened once more, head cocked, to the others' low voices, before sliding her hand under her pillow. When her hand emerged, clutched in it was a journal with a plain leather cover. This journal contained every bit of important information she already knew or had collected during her stay at Grimmauld Place about horcruxes, soul magic, and their connection to Voldemort.

She flipped mindlessly through the pages, not really reading. She knew everything the book contained already, why reread it? The page flipping stopped on one page, a page that had seem much more daylight than any of the others because it held her deepest secret. In one rare, obscure book found deep in the furthest unused corner of the Black library, covered in dust and untouched for decades, she found it: the piece of information that would, ultimately, save lives.

It was the ability to transfer the soul fragments of horcruxes from one object to another.

Of course, this was for the purpose of piecing back together the soul, for those who wanted their soul whole again, that is. The book only gave theoretical examples for transferring from an inanimate object to original owner, not one human to another, both of whom are not the original owner of the soul. This posed several problems about whether or not this would work in their specific situation. Thirteen pages of these questions, what-ifs, theories, potential problems. Thirteen pages of writing she would have to ignore because this was the only solution that had a potentially positive ending. Tonight was the night. She would perform the spell tonight and face the consequences, if there were any, later.

All rationality aside, she needed to set her plan into action. With a small vial of slow reacting sleeping potion carefully hidden in the folds of her clothes, she emerged to begin preparing a dinner. The others paid her little mind as she started moving about and making noises in the small kitchenette. A half an hour later, there were three plates with large helpings of steak and mashed potatoes and gravy, and one with salad instead of steak, floating through the tent towards the three men sitting around the table, for once getting along relatively well. One set itself gently on the table in front of each man while the fourth stopped at an empty seat next to Draco. Seconds later, Cecilia emerged from the kitchen holding two mugs with her eyes focused intently on the two floating in front of her.

Draco immediately rose and took the two mugs from the air and her shoulders visibly relaxed without the added stress. "Thanks. No matter how much I practice that, it's always hard to focus without my wand."

Draco sighed as he handed one mug off the Sirius and kept the other for himself. "You could have just asked us to help you."

Sirius gave a hearty laugh. "Have you met this girl, Malfoy? Most fiercely independent girl I've ever met, she is; wouldn't ask for help to save her life."

Harry grinned and threw in his own two cents. "Now if it was saving someone else's life, and asking for help would save them, she'd do it in a heartbeat."

Cecilia poked at her salad with her fork. "What? Is it everyone pick on Cecilia day? Because none of you have any room to talk." She glared pointedly at each in turn before turning back to her salad.

"Well, someone is in a bad mood now." Sirius teased her from across the table.

"You would be too if three people were ganging up on you." The teasing stopped and the chatter died off as Cici frowned down at her plate. Several minutes passed in this tense silence and she could feel the three men passing glances and communicating silently thinking they had escaped her notice. She raised her head with an exasperated sigh. "Just because my head isn't up, doesn't mean I can't see what you're doing." They guiltily went back to their food. The silence continued for several more long minutes before Cecilia relented. "I'm sorry, guys. I've been on edge a lot recently. It's hard to actually sit and relax and joke when you know there are lives at stake every moment you sit here enjoying yourselves."

Sirius stopped sipping his butter beer mid swallow and began choking. Harry reached out and patted his back worriedly. Sirius recovered easily and sent a grin towards Cecilia. "That was on purpose, right?"

The two other boys held their breath and waited. Cecilia merely caught Sirius' eyes and cracked a grin in return. The boys relaxed. "Somehow, I'm not surprised you're the only one who caught it, Sirius, especially given your name and joking attitude."

Draco was about to turn back to his meal but stopped. "Wait. Caught what?"

"Nothing, Draco, it's not important." Cecilia shared a smirk with Sirius and went back to her meal with a decidedly more pleasant expression on her face.

A while later, plates were cleared away and Cecilia curled up with a book on her favourite chair outside her 'room.' Slowly, the others drifted off to head to sleep and eventually only Cecilia remained. The potion had finally kicked in; it was a good thing too, because it left the boys too tired to notice the distinct lack of page turning while Cici 'read' her book. In her mind, she was preparing, running through the long string of Latin she had to recite from memory later. She had only one chance at this, and she had to get it right the first time, regardless of the consequences.

She waited until all sounds of movement ceased before moving from her position. First she checked Sirius; he was out like a light, not surprising since he was the first to retire for the night. Next came Draco; she actually entered his room rather than simply peeking in to check. She found herself sitting tentatively on the edge of his bed. He was out, but still propped up against the headboard, his back supported by pillows. In his hands once more was that small black journal. After deliberating for a moment, Cecilia reached out and gently plucked the object from his fingers, remembering how he hid it so suddenly whenever she would enter the room.

She flipped through the oldest pages, not reading, just skimming. She caught the names of several of her classmates a few times, but it was dominated by the phrase 'those Potters.' She noticed as the dates at the tops of the pages progressed from their first year of school and so on. Eventually, 'those Potters' turned into two separate identities, Cecilia and Potter. Eventually Cecilia was shortened to Cici and the other names stopped appearing by the beginning of their fifth year. It had transformed to an average journal recording others to just her. She stopped at the point where she went missing, refusing to read even one entire page of the book and betray her best friend's privacy.

It pained her. She knew his feelings were there, how could she not, after all, she had them as well. But she also knew it was illogical to act on them, especially this close to her imminent doom. Well, perhaps 'imminent doom' was a bit dramatized, but either way, she didn't expect to escape the looming battle with her life. She sighed sadly and closed the book without reading anything more than the dates and names of people mentioned. She leaned down and placed a light kiss on the corner of his mouth before setting the book back on his lap.

She left him with one last glance back. When she finally made her way to Harry's corner of the tent, she knew he had to be fast asleep by this point. She stepped in and placed a silencing charm for good measure, just in case the other two woke up for some reason. Harry was sprawled on his bed, face up, making her job a lot easier. Cecilia pulled from her pocket a safety pin and pricked her finger hard enough to draw one drop of blood. She traced this blood over the famous lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead.

She gripped her wand tightly in her hand. One chance. With one last, calming breath, she connected her wand with the middle of his forehead and began chanting. "Salvum me fac hoc iterum est ad partem animae alligentur. Hac vita sanguis ego facio, hoc languidis animam meam, quia mei paenitet actiones." *

A white light started glowing around Harry, centering on the point where her wand and the scar connected. Everything seemed to be going according to planShe began chanting again. "Salvum me fac hoc iterum est ad partem animae alligentur. Hac vita sanguis ego facio, hoc languidis animam meam, quia mei paenitet actiones." She waited and watched in awe as the light started engulfing her wand and traveling up her arm. The light continued until it had covered Cecilia's entire body. She chanted a third and final time. "Salvum me fac hoc iterum est ad partem animae alligentur. Hac vita sanguis ego facio, hoc languidis animam meam, quia mei paenitet actiones."

A black mist rose from Harry's head and started slinking along Cecilia's wand and arm. It spread along her body until it had completely engulfed the white light that had previously been there. The darkness blocked Cecilia's vision. It was like a physical presence covering her entire body. It tightened its grip around her, entering her mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, overtaking her entire being.

With her mouth forced open in a silent scream, she fell, her wand finally losing contact with Harry's face.

And then the searing pain started.

*I hope no one was offended by that Latin because I don't speak it, I only used Google and with the few years of French I took, even I can tell it's not accurate. Not even close. Stupid Google. This is what I typed out in English: Make me whole once more for bound within this object is a piece of soul. With this life blood I do hereby reclaim my soul for I regret my actions.

Also, while you're here. The joke earlier, if you didn't catch it either, was a pun. She said something was at steak and they were eating steak. I didn't write that intentionally, it just happened and I went with it.

Hey guys.

I feel almost sheepish as I come back to you after yet another eight months. I don't want to sit here and make excuses, but I feel as though you all deserve explanations, especially if you've still stuck around.

The last time, after eight months, I thought was a completely different person, so changed and matured. Compared to some of the events of these last eight months, that is nothing. I've had most of this written since June, but marching band started up in July and I was a leader this year, so my responsibilities more than doubled. I got busy and then, suddenly, it was August. By August, things were looking incredibly amazing for the marching season; we had an entire new style, an exciting show, enthusiastic freshmen, involved leaders, and a weekend trip for a competition scheduled. In the middle of band camp week, that entire plan came to a stuttering halt when we lost a band member in a car accident. I found it hard to do much of anything creative for a while; all I wanted to do was sit down and try to sort my thoughts out. And once I got back to writing (out of necessity due to a creative writing course at school), little by little, it was always, somehow, based around that day, that situation, those feelings. Two hours. A two hour break, that's all it was, and then he was gone.

I hope you all have a happy Christmas or whatever you celebrate (if you celebrate), and cherish those close to you, because they could be gone in an instant.

I'm going to try so very hard to keep up, as I'm very close to what I had planned for the original ending over two years ago. I'm going to California for a week for the Rose Parade, so after then I'll try to get back into the groove of writing.

I'll talk to you guys again, be that in one month, or one year, I will be back, because I always keep my promises. This will be finished.

~WD

12/22/12