A/N: Sorry, I know it's been ages...I just have so many things I want to do over the summer, and I had more work than ever this year at college. (Well, actually. I can't really use that as an excuse, since I've had this chapter technically done for a LONNGGGG time, probably since Christmas, but I've kept thinking, 'I just want to proofread that one more time.')
So anyway, hope you enjoy (:
Chapter 38: Search and Destroy
"Kreacher?"
To Harry's relief, a small 'crack' sounded nearby and the old gnarled house elf appeared.
Kreacher bowed low and said in a less than gracious sort of tone, "Kreacher has come at Master's bidding."
Before Kreacher could go on to mumble to himself in a perfectly audible tone about how much he hated being bound to a filthy half-breed and would much rather serve the wonderful Malfoy or Bellatrix, Harry said, "Kreacher, open the door and let us in."
Kreacher bowed low again and, without another word, vanished with a crack.
"Why that little—" Ron began, but just then, there came the metallic clicks of the door being unlocked and a clatter of something that might have been a chain slithering off the door on the other side. The door creaked open and the four saw Kreacher standing in the doorway.
"Thank you, Kreacher," said Hermione kindly, but Kreacher refused to look at her as they all clambered in over the threshold and into the dark hallway.
The door closed eerily behind them and the hallway remained completely dark for a long moment. Then the old gas lamps along the wall finally sputtered to life, starting with the ones right next to their group continuing down the length of the hall.
"This is—" Yugi began, startling everyone, but Hermione pressed a finger to her lips. Yugi stopped mid-sentence and glanced over at her with raised eyebrows.
"We have to be quiet while we're in the hall," Hermione explained in a whisper, "or we'll wake her up."
"You mean that there's someone else here?" said Yugi, lowering his voice.
"Well...in a manner of speaking."
Yugi gave the peeling paint of the walls a wary look as they started down the hallway before continuing quietly, "I apologize. I was only going to comment that this is a rather odd place for a person's burial." He turned his head to look the chained door behind him.
Having forgotten about what he'd told Yugi earlier, Harry was caught off-guard for a moment, but he recovered quickly. He turned his head away from Yugi to look at the shabby walls of the hallway. "It isn't a burial site," he said curtly, almost forgetting to whisper. He didn't feel like he owed Yugi an explanation though, especially since Yugi was probably just being snide. His insistence on coming must mean that he'd already guessed the truth to some extent anyway. So Harry just remained hostilely silent as they walked.
The pharaoh however, though Harry didn't see it, hesitated in confusion for a moment at this. He did not know whether Harry had lied about visiting his parents, or if the burial site held some secret Harry was determined not to let him see and so had taken a detour, still hoping to lose him at some point. The pharaoh would have to keep his guard up on this escapade.
Looking away from tall former Quidditch Captain, the pharaoh redirected his attention to the little creature in a loin-cloth walking along silently beside them. He noticed how it seemed rather sulky and resentful. The pharaoh lifted his gaze, glancing back at Harry for a moment before he turned away again. He probably was better off not asking any more questions just yet.
The group stayed silent for the length of the hallway. The pharaoh followed suit as his three guides crept with special care past some ragged, thick curtains and he theorized that a door to another room was hidden behind them. Whoever Hermione had been talking about could be sleeping right behind the door. But whether waking her up would result in their being kicked out or if it meant they would be attacked, the pharaoh hated to think.
When they were about halfway up the stairs, Hermione asked, "You saw it in the drawing room, right Harry?" When he didn't answer, she took it as an affirmative and didn't stop.
About that time the little creature began to mutter to himself. The pharaoh glanced back down at him curiously as he tried to understood what it was saying. He thought he caught the word 'mudblood' and 'desecrated' and he began to wonder who or what "Kreacher" was exactly.
Ron must have seen him looking and caught his expression, because he leaned over and whispered, "Kreacher's a house elf, like we were telling you about earlier. He's usually working at Hogwarts..." Ron trailed off as he rethought this and added, "But I dunno if he'll work there anymore. Hogwarts looked pretty dead, didn't it?"
The pharaoh mouthed a silent "oh" and, knitting his eyebrows a little, glanced back at Kreacher with a look on his face that clearly said, "He's not what I imagined."
Ron grinned and said, still whispering, "Most house elves aren't like that." He gestured at the muttering elf. "While we were at Hogwarts, we used to sneak down to the kitchens sometimes and the elves gave us whatever we wanted—"
He stopped as Hermione stalked past them, looking annoyed.
Ron shrugged and they followed her over the top of the stairs and into a room a short ways down the hall.
When they got inside, the pharaoh saw that the room wasn't that much different from what he'd seen of the house so far, with its decorations giving the impression that the place must have once been richly furnished, but had obviously been allowed to deteriorate over the years. There as a thin layer of dust over everything and the peeling, dull-green paint emphasized how abandoned it looked. Heavy curtains, which were also green, blocked almost all the morning light from entering the gloomy room and, after the pharaoh's eyes had time to adjust, he thought he could just make out what looked like several old tapestries hanging on the opposite wall.
Hermione went over to the curtains and opened one or two of them up, making the three boys wince at the bright light.
Like the pharaoh, Harry noticed the tapestries as well and only looked away when he had to raise a hand to shield his eyes. However, Harry had not been looking at the tapestries with curiosity. Instead, as he stared at the filthy, aging tapestries, he thought of the time he'd stood with Sirius in this very room and he'd listened to his godfather talk about the Blacks.
Harry felt a sharp pang of loss and remembered his intent to never set foot in this house again. Naturally, that had been just before he'd learned that Grimmauld Place officially belonged to him.
"Well," said Hermione, clearing her throat nervously. "Should we start looking now?"
Harry forced himself out of his melancholy thoughts and tried to refocus on the task at hand. "Yeah, we'd better."
The pharaoh had no idea what they were looking for, so he didn't move even as the three started toward some cabinets resting against the side walls. Luckily, before she got halfway across the room, Hermione remembered him and explained, "It's a locket we're looking for." She mimed the size and shape of the locket in midair. "There should be an snake shaped like 'S' on one side."
Harry didn't look pleased, but Hermione ignored him.
And so, they looked though all the compartments of the cabinets where Harry remembered they'd found the locket to begin with as well as behind them, but it wasn't all that long before it became apparent that, even if the locket had been in one of them at one time, it certainly wasn't there now.
"We got rid of so much that was in here," Hermione said fretfully as she checked through the cabinets near the wall furthest from the door for the fourth time. "We might have thrown it away."
"Yeah, really," said Ron gloomily. "We'll never find that locket. Well, maybe it wasn't the locket," he said hopefully.
"We'll never know if we can't find it," Hermione said. "If we threw it away, it could be anywhere by now."
Hermione glanced around at Yugi as he busily peered through the filthy glass of the cabinets on the other side of the room, nearer to the door, before looking back at Ron and saying in a low voice, "But the more I think about it, the more I think this locket can't be the one we're looking for. R.A.B. took the locket and intended to destroy it, right? So I just can't see how it would have ended up here."
Ron nodded and shrugged. "You never know, I guess." He looked over at Harry, who had stopped searching and was now sitting next to the wall nearby looking rather somber, and asked, "What do you think, Harry?"
But Harry just shook his head and gestured vaguely. They saw that Yugi was coming back toward them.
Ron and Hermione stopped talking and pretended to be completely focused on searching again.
Yugi soon turned away again and went over to the curtains next to the cabinets he'd been searching a moment ago.
The pharaoh had long-since begun to feel that this was all an exercise in futility, and it seemed clear that Harry and the others were not going to let him be of much help.
He glanced over his shoulder at where they had ducked their heads back together, but blinked in surprised as he saw Harry stand up and make his way toward him.
Harry knelt down and lifted the bottom ends of the curtains up as though to help him look underneath them. Neither spoke for a moment until Harry said softly from where he was kneeling, so quiet that the pharaoh almost didn't catch it, "You don't know. You don't know what we're doing, or what's going on."
"True," the pharaoh answered, just as quietly. "I won't ask, but know that you're always free to tell me."
"I can't do that," Harry said firmly. He stood up straight and said, still staring at the curtains in front of him, "Listen, I appreciate you being worried about us and wanting to help us out. But I'm sorry, you can't help us. We know what we're doing, and there isn't anything you can do. You're only putting yourself and the rest of us at risk by being here." Harry hesitated for a moment, before he added, "You can't protect us, if that's what you think you're doing."
"Protect you?" said the pharaoh, bemused. "Who says I'm here to protect you? I'm just interested in fulfilling a common goal. Is it so hard to believe that two enemies of evil could be allies?"
Harry finally turned his head to look at the pharaoh, frowning. His lips barely moved when he spoke, "We can be allies. But you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be following us around while we have things we need to do."
"Harry, I could assist you," said the pharaoh softly. He had figured they'd be somewhat annoyed with him if he forced them to let him come with them, but he couldn't understand why Harry hadn't given in yet. What did he mean by "putting yourself and us at risk"? Did Harry not trust him? It couldn't be that Harry was worried about his safety, not after what happened at the Room of Requirement.
"If we want to have a hope of victory, you have to know that we need to work together—" He then had a strong impulse to add something about the spirit of the Millennium Ring. Telling him everything might not be a good idea, especially if it made Harry think he was mentally unstable, but perhaps he could at least let them know that another threat beside Voldemort existed and he'd come with them mainly for that reason. However, before he had time to think of a way to put his thoughts into words, another voice cut their conversation short.
Just having come over from where he and Hermione had still been talking quietly, Ron asked, "Harry, could you come here for a second?"
"What? Have you found it?" Harry asked quickly.
"Er," said Ron, "no, not yet. We just wanted to ask you something."
Harry looked disappointed. "Oh, okay, just a minute."
As Ron went back to where Hermione stood next to the corner cabinet near to one of the tapestries, Harry gave the pharaoh one last look before following.
The pharaoh saw them whispering, their backs toward him. He sighed slightly, and turned his attention back to the curtains.
When Harry got over to Hermione and Ron, Hermione said in a low voice, "We know R.A.B. took the locket, right? Well, you don't think 'B' stood for—"
" –'Black,' do you?" Ron finished.
"I guess it could have," said Harry in surprise, and he wondered why he hadn't thought of it earlier.
Hermione was already eagerly looking over the names on the tapestry next to them and Harry winced slightly as he said, "But even if it did, R.A.B. probably won't be on there. They disown anyone who doesn't look at muggles as lower-lifeforms, and they blow their names off, so someone who fought against Voldemort..." He let it hang.
Hermione looked disappointed and reluctantly pulled away from the tapestry.
More convinced than ever of the locket being the one they wanted, they doubled their search efforts, expanding from just the cabinets to other pieces of furniture and all over the floor, hoping that, perchance, the locket might have accidentally fallen out of the rubbish bag on the way out and accidentally kicked somewhere out of the way. They methodically opened and reopened all the drawers of the writing desk in the corner, pulled out all the cushions of the sofa, and looked under and behind every piece of furniture in the room, but they still came up empty-handed.
"It's hopeless," said Hermione flopping down on the sofa and looking defeated.
The pharaoh and Ron showed their agreement in their own ways, but Harry didn't want to give up yet. It had to be here. How could he be satisfied until he found out for sure whether or not it was the one?
His eyes scanned the entire room once again, even the ceiling and chandelier above. However, another thought came to him and wordlessly he started toward the door.
"What is it, Harry?" Hermione asked, tired, but Harry didn't answer.
Hermione and Ron shared a look and followed, leaving the pharaoh to follow behind them.
Harry went down to the main floor, then took another set of stairs that led down to the kitchen. As they reached the bottom of the steps, Harry called, "Kreacher, are you in here?"
The others arrived just in time to see the house elf in his usual loin cloth climbing out of his den underneath the sink. Before Kreacher had the chance to to ask Harry what he wanted, making it clear that he despised Harry and everything he did, and would much rather be the servant of a proper bigoted person, Harry said, "Kreacher, show us the stuff you put in there."
"Please," Hermione added, immediately seeing what Harry was thinking, though Ron looked confused and the pharaoh had given up trying to clue himself into anything that was happening.
Kreacher looked horrified and began to croak in pained protest, even as his body began to move toward the den, "Oh Mistress, forgive Kreacher! Now Kreacher's unworthy master has come to destroy the only possessions of his mistress that Kreacher was able to save—Oh, the wicked Potter-boy will burn them if Kreacher gives in—"
Kreacher started toward the far wall, no doubt to start banging his head against it, but Harry grabbed him and grimaced. The struggling, dirty little house elf was not the most pleasant thing in the world to hold. "We're not going to burn anything," he assured him, "we're just looking for something."
Kreacher stopped struggling and turned to glare at Harry. He didn't look as though he believed his master in the slightest and eyed him suspiciously.
Harry felt safe to let go of the elf now and he set him down. "Please," he said, the politeness coming a little grudgingly, "we're just looking for one thing in particular. We won't bother anything else."
Kreacher still didn't look pleased, but he couldn't refuse Harry's orders for long. It almost felt strange to Harry for him to have that much power over someone. Wrong, almost, though he decided never to mention the feeling to Hermione.
Kreacher, grumbling angrily to himself, turned away and began to drag every Black heirloom he had managed to salvage from the cleanup the summer before last from under the water tank in the cupboard.
Harry wasn't entirely surprised to see just how much junk Kreacher had gotten a hold of and couldn't help but wrinkle his nose a little as he caught sight of the gray-green mold that had begun to form on some of the objects. The unpleasant smell they gave off from being in such a dark, damp place for so long didn't do anything to soften the impression.
Harry hoped that Kreacher had perhaps saved the locket with the other things he'd managed to get a hold of. Before Kreacher had even finished bringing out everything in his stash, Harry began picking through the growing pile for the locket and the other three soon followed suit, though Ron didn't look anymore thrilled than Harry.
It took some time, but, to their disappointment, they eventually realized that Slytherin's locket must not have ended up in Kreacher's den after all. While one or two of the objects were lockets of a kind, Harry saw right away that they couldn't be the heavy locket with the large 'S' on the front that he remembered seeing both during the cleanup and in Dumbledore's pensieve.
"It really is hopeless," Hermione said again, shaking her head. "If it's not here, the things in that rubbish sack could have ended up about anywhere."
"Plus, Mundungus nicked some of the stuff that used to be here," Ron added.
Harry frowned when reminded of Mundungus' thievery once again. As always, it made his blood boil just to think about the grungy thief stealing from his dead godfather's house just to make a few extra galleons, and if he now had to add the fact that Mundungus may have swiped their only chance of locating one the horcruxes that they needed to destroy...
As they headed back upstairs to get away from Kreacher, who had by that time begun his mutterings about how it served them right for trying to get rid of all his mistress' things as he slowly began the process of re-hoarding the objects in his "room," Ron suggested, "Maybe the person who carried the sack downstairs accidentally dropped something."
"Or maybe Mundungus felt guilty after we ran into him at the Three Broomsticks and he brought the things he stole back," said Harry, almost sarcastically, but he was too tired to make it sound as biting as it might have.
Even though neither sounded plausible to the group, those were truthfully the only hope they had at this point. So, after a little complaining from Ron, they diligently continued on with their search.
They looked all around the old hallway near the drawing room and examined each and every step that led down to the ground floor. They looked all around inside the entrance hall next, lifting up the umbrella stand and paying extra attention to cracks in the wall that could have been just large enough that a locket might have slid inside. Their spirits were only further dampened when the pharaoh looked behind the set a thick curtains in the entrance hall and ended up meeting Sirius' mother (whose lungs turned out to be just as powerful as Harry remembered) for the first time.
They went down to the kitchen, not only opening every cupboard and peering into every empty bowl, but even going so far as to search Kreacher's den themselves, despite Hermione's protests of it being an invasion of privacy.
Though their hopes were falling quickly now, they went back upstairs and picked through every room on the same floor as the drawing room. Just as they all made a move to go up to the next floor to search the room Ron and Harry had stayed in, more out of desperation than because they actually believed the locket might have ended up there, Hermione suggested they take a break. After all, even though they had little sense of real time in this dark, empty place, they all felt lunch drawing near by the grumbling in their stomachs. Gratefully, everyone agreed.
Rather than going all the way back down to the dining room downstairs, the group only went back to the drawing room to eat the food Hermione had packed, figuring they'd save themselves a trip. They ate in silence until Hermione said, "Well, I suppose we'd better search every room in the house, just to be safe. On the slim chance that Mundungus decided to bring it back here—if he was even the one who took it—we don't know what he might have done with it. Or if someone else got a hold of the locket and decided to hide it..."
"That'll take forever," Ron grumbled. "Let's just face it, Hermione—it's not here."
"Well, if something has been miraculously revealed to you that the rest of us don't know about and you have a better idea of where it might have ended up, Ronald, then go ahead and tell us," Hermione snapped. "Why don't you face the fact that if it's not here, then we'll probably never find it."
Harry wanted to tell them to be quiet, but said nothing as he gloomily reflected that there was a good chance that they were both right; their one lead was quickly turning into a dead end. It would have been one thing if they had found the locket and realized it wasn't the horcrux they were looking for after all, but it was so bitter to think he might have had his hands on it only a couple of years ago and had let it slip through his fingers.
Sighing, Harry turned away from Hermione and Ron, who were currently glaring in opposite directions, and his gaze fell on Yugi. Since the couch hadn't been large enough to seat four people, Yugi had insisted he be the one to sit on the floor nearby and had ignored the three's protests. Already finished eating, Yugi had gone to stand next to the grimy window Hermione had pulled the curtain back on earlier. Yugi looked thoughtful as he looked at the window, thinking about things Harry could only begin to guess.
For some reason, Harry felt himself again suspicious of Yugi's motives in coming with them. Yugi had some silly idea of protecting them—that was what Harry had decided. However, say Yugi was a Death Eater spy and he found the locket before they did. Wouldn't he slip it into his pocket without telling them, then take it directly to Voldemort afterward? Could he have already found it?
Harry reminded himself again of Yugi's role in the destruction of the first horcrux. Someone working for Voldemort wouldn't have done something like that, trying to win their trust or no, surely. True, Yugi had a rather odd demeanor, and his coming to Hogwarts had been shrouded in mystery, but Yugi couldn't possibly be an enemy.
However, it seemed as though fate was determined that Harry should not trust the first year Gryffindor, for at that moment Yugi reached into his pocket and began to play with something inside it. A chill shot up Harry's spine, all his senses immediately alert. 'It couldn't be,' he thought, trying to arrest his alarm before it could take control of him. 'But what if it is?'
He couldn't stop himself from considering charging Yugi right that moment, grabbing the thing out of his pocket by force, but Harry forced himself to calm down and think rationally. That wouldn't be the most tactful way to find out what he needed to know. Instead, he climbed slowly to his feet as he tried to think of a better course of action.
He approached quietly so that Yugi didn't seem to notice him at first. Yugi's eyes had wandered down to his pocket and he looked worriedly at it, his hand rubbing whatever it was.
"What's that you have?" Harry asked as he got close enough to not be overheard by Hermione and Ron, who had long since started up their argument again, and Yugi jerked visibly in surprise. He yanked his hand out of his pocket and turned to look at Harry in, not alarm exactly, but at least a vague discomfort.
"Nothing really," he said, turning so that the pocket in question was away from Harry. "Just a trinket I carry around with me."
"Can I see it?" Harry asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously.
"I—" Yugi began, clearly not comfortable with the idea, but Hermione and Ron unwittingly came to the boy's rescue.
"Come on, we'd better start searching again," said Hermione. Apparently she and Ron had grown tired of arguing about the hopelessness of finding the locket.
Without a word, Yugi went on past Harry and followed Hermione and Ron out of the room. Harry frowned, unsure of what to do. If Yugi refused to show whatever he had in his pocket, should he tell Hermione and Ron, and then have them help him corner Yugi and force him to show? Should he do it now, or wait for a time when the shorter Gryffindor wouldn't expect it?
He followed them reluctantly up to the next floor where they continued their search. Though he was on fire with impatience, Harry decided he shouldn't do anything right away. He hated waiting like this, especially with the chance that something bad might happen in the meantime, but he tried to remind himself that he couldn't really be sure anything was actually wrong. He was only going on a hunch, and a hunch didn't warrant him to tackle Yugi to the ground and put a wand to his throat. Instead, he took to only observing Yugi closely during their search, often keeping him from doing much searching himself. He saw Yugi reach into his pocket several more times during the search, as though, Harry thought, to make sure whatever it was was still there.
No matter what he did, Harry could not drive the thought that the "trinket" might be the locket. Yugi could have found and stolen it during the first part of their search, before anyone was any the wiser. However, Yugi spoke little and Harry knew if he tried to tell Hermione or Ron, Yugi would be sure to hear every word they said in the smaller rooms. He was also reluctant to take them aside and talk to them privately, since, after he'd asked Yugi specifically what was in his pocket, Harry knew it wasn't inconceivable that Yugi was now watching him out of the corner of his eye as much as Harry watched him.
In any case, Harry didn't want to do anything not knowing how Yugi would react to being caught if his theory was right, so he decided that the best thing would be for him to catch Yugi off guard somehow, get him at wand point.
They searched Ginny and Hermione's old room, the room that had belonged to Fred and George, and even went all the way up to the place Buckbeak had stayed, but still they found nothing.
Ron and Hermione continued to get more and more discouraged, but Harry's new suspicion gave him a certain hope as much as it put him completely on edge.
"It's not here," said Hermione, shaking her head. "It's just not here."
"That's what I said three hours ago," Ron muttered as they walked slowly back down the stairs to the drawing room.
Hermione's face was downcast as she said, "I don't know where else we can look. It could be anywhere."
Harry saw Yugi's hand rustling around in his pocket again, the boy's exhausted expression showing hints of disappointment and irritation as well. Feeling impatient again, Harry slowly slid his hand into his own pocket, closing his fingers around his wand.
Hermione and Ron, oblivious, plowed on with their discussion.
"We must have really gotten rid of it," said Hermione. "But maybe there's still a chance we can find out where all those things got sent to."
"A big rubbish heap somewhere?" Ron guessed unenthusiastically.
Hermione ignored Ron and continued, "Mrs. Weasley would probably know or, if Mudungus really did happen to take it, we could find him. He might even still have it."
"Well yeah," Ron muttered sarcastically. "Let's spend the rest of our lives looking into a bunch of leads on a locket we aren't even sure is the right one. How are we even supposed to find Dung anyway?"
Hermione disregarded the first part, but his question made her hesitate. "Well..." she began uncertainly.
Harry broke in unexpectedly, "We could probably just ask one of the Or—McGonagall or somebody, if we could find her. Mrs. Weasley might even know where he is." Though she probably wouldn't appreciate being asked all that much, as it concerned a person she was slightly less fond of than potion grime at the bottom of an old cauldron.
"And considering we good as ran away," said Ron, "Mum might not let us leave again if we went to visit her."
Hermione sighed. "We aren't getting anywhere with this. If we're even afraid of asking the people we know who might know something, we're never going to find it."
"We could try asking the Hogshead owner," Ron suggested, though didn't sound particularly convinced of any benefit in that either. "We saw him talking to Mundungus earlier—maybe he's a regular customer or something."
"Maybe," said Hermione, equally uncertain.
The discussion lapsed into a long, oppressive silence in which Hermione and Ron stared dejectedly at the floor while Yugi continued to play with whatever it was in his pocket. Harry watched him out of the corner of his eye.
"Well," said Hermione finally, climbing slowly to her feet. "I suppose that's as good as anywhere to start. What do you think, Harry?"
"What?" said Harry, looking away from Yugi. After making his own contribution, he'd tuned out of their conversation and let his head return to his own thoughts again. "Er, what do you mean?"
"We were talking about going to Hogsmeade," she repeated, giving him a slightly disapproving look.
"Uh, sure," said Harry, becoming distracted again as he saw Yugi withdraw his hand from his pocket, a rather unhappy look on the boy's face. "Why are we going there again?"
Frowning, Hermione answered, "Because we saw Mundungus with the Hogshead owner awhile back, don't you remember? And we thought there might be a chance... Are you listening, Harry?"
"Yeah," said Harry, forcing himself to look back at Hermione. "Yeah, I remember that. Sounds like a good idea to me." It didn't much matter to Harry where they went so long as he would have an opportunity to get the upper hand over Yugi to find out the truth for certain.
The three boys got up and followed Hermione down the hall to the staircase. As they crept carefully past the heavy, tattered curtains in the entrance hall, they made their way toward the iron door which guarded the entrance of what had once been the Noble House of Black, the headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, and Sirius' home. Harry looked at the peeling wallpaper, and felt that the place not only made him see the loneliness he'd felt since the end of his fifth year, but now it made him realize that it may someday represent his failure to Dumbledore as well, if he could not secure the horcrux locket.
Reaching into his pocket, Harry balled his fist around the fake locket Dumbledore had given his life to obtain and swore to himself that he wouldn't fail.
As they reached the end of the hall and the chains securing the door slid off over the iron like snakes, he turned back and took one last look at the entrance hall. The old gas lamps lining the way went out one by one, throwing the place into temporary darkness. Shuddering, Harry turned back to look at the door again as it started to open. Without meaning to, he glanced at Yugi and was startled to see Yugi staring back at him, the boy's expression unfathomable.
"I'm sure we'll find it," said Yugi in a low voice.
"Yeah," said Harry, not breaking away from Yugi's gaze. "I'm sure we will." Harry tilted his head back to look up at the bright blue sky which could now be seen through the open door of the old house and silently hoped that number twelve Grimmauld Place was a place to which he never returned.
The spirit leaned over the empty basin, a murderous expression on his face. The invisible Diabound, which had served as something of a boat in sludging its way to the tiny island and now hovered over him as a kind of shield from the pale horrors clumsily trying to make their way out of the dark waters, seemed to vibrate with its master's anger.
"Voldemort, you blundering fool," the spirit hissed, his head bowed. His golden eye sifted through the thoughts and knowledge of the Dark Lord once again, still only finding that, as far as the snake-like man knew, the locket still rested within the basin at the center of this cave.
"Is it destroyed then or isn't it?" said the spirit, his fingers closing tightly around the edges of the dark stone. A vague doubt about his plans entered his mind for the first time. He closed his eye for a moment, allowing himself time to become completely calm again so he could think clearly.
There could be any number of explanations for what had happened to the locket. Dumbledore had known of the existence of the locket and the other objects, and had planned to have them destroyed, but as far as the spirit knew, Dumbledore had only managed to find one and that had been before the school year had even started. The last time the spirit had checked, the headmaster had only had vague ideas as to the locations of the others.
However, the spirit had to admit that it wasn't as though he had kept constant tabs on every part of that expansive mind. It wasn't so far-fetched to think that Dumbledore could have come to the cave and destroyed it between the last time the spirit had scanned his mind and the time he'd died.
At this thought, the spirit relaxed. If Dumbledore had come here, then the locket was surely destroyed—Voldemort was rather pathetic, compared to what the man thought he was, and equally so compared to his rival, Albus Dumbledore. Now that the man was dead and out of the way, the spirit did not mind admitting as much.
The spirit smirked, staring down at his reflection in the eerie silver-green water of the basin. But then his face shifted slowly, taking on a more pensive expression.
'But how can I be certain that that's how it happened?' The only person who would have been likely to know was dead. The spirit closed his eye.
Everyone... He would know the thoughts of everyone in Dumbledore's little group of followers who called themselves "The Order of the Phoenix." Distance could not protect them; the spirit could move as easily through their minds as if they had been standing right next to him on this small rock of an island. Yes, all the teachers of Hogwarts, and of everyone else who associated with Dumbledore, he would look into their minds for something of value. McGonagall, the Weaselys, the werewolf Lupin who'd taught Defense Against the Dark Arts four years ago, the old one called "Mad-Eye Moody," the Potions Master, the Charms Professor, the Potter boy...
The spirit stopped, the thoughts of the last one catching his attention. A momentary feeling of surprise found him as he absorbed the new information, but he quickly waved the feeling away, allowing his mind to calculate what would be the best next step.
The spirit knew he could have avoided a great deal of effort if he'd been more careful to look into Potter's thoughts before, but he had not expected that the information he received from the Dark Lord's mind would be wrong. But there was no point worrying about it now.
The Potter boy's mind contained several vague ideas as to the location of the locket. Though the spirit highly doubted it had come into the place that Harry seemed to think, the other ideas could be useful. However, if Harry and his motley crew searched every place it might have ended up, it would likely take weeks to even just track down some of the people to get the information they wanted. Plus, they seemed rather hesitant to ask anyone anything at all, since it could possibly result in a limitation to their movement.
The spirit had, by this time, grown impatient for this game of 'search and destroy' to end, so that he could get on to the real game. Closing his eye, his own mind moved stealthily forward on its way to infiltrate the mind of another.
'Mundungus Fletcher... Let us see if you've hidden away some useful information, the same way you hide away your ill-gotten goods.'
"Even I have ways I like to win and ways I hate to win."
A/N: There, a monster of a chapter. Well...a monster for me, anyway. Can't promise that the next chapter will be any sooner, but it will come...eventually.
Thank you for reading and for all your reviews!
Posted 7/8/10, revised a little 9/10/11