When faced with irrefutable evidence that higher powers exist, it is only human to fall apart...
Harry slowly awoke as the sun rose and began to filter through the stained canvas of the tent he shared with Ron and Hermione. He sat up wearily, and fumbled in the dawn's gloom for his glasses. He enjoyed a few moments of peace, before the task still ahead of him scattered his idle thoughts. Hallows or Horcruxes? That was the question that bounced around his head like a fly bounces around in a greenhouse. Harry slid out of his bed, making as little noise as he was able so as not to wake Ron who was still asleep, not that he needed to bother; Ron had slept through thunderstorms before and he wasn't likely to wake to a footstep.
Having dressed himself, Harry wandered into the main area of the tent, where Hermione was curled up in an armchair reading, as usual. He moved into the tiny kitchen and found the scant remains of last night's food, which he divided up and heated his portion.
"Harry," Hermione said from behind him, "I was thinking about what Xenophilius said, about the Deathly Hallows, and I was wondering if I could take a closer look at you cloak?"
Harry turned to her, and handed her a steaming mug of tea before answering.
"Sure, but I thought you didn't believe old Xeno, why the change of heart?"
"Well I was reading this fascinating book that I found in the Hogwarts library, a journal of some sort from the restricted section detailing the research of a master-enchanter, and I wanted to see if what they said was true. About the cloak, I mean, because if what they said is true then there should be no way that your cloak still even nearly works!"
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, perplexed, "Of course it must be able to work, I mean, it works right now."
"It's just that hiding something from sight is actually fairly difficult, and to make an object that can do such a thing, and last for more than a few years would take incredible power. Your cloak was owned by your dad, it's an heirloom generations old at least, there's no way it should still work because there's no fabric that exists that can hold the amount of power that would require."
At that point Ron walked into the kitchen, wiping the sleep from his eyes and yawning as he came. He took his plate of leftovers and started eating, not caring even to warm them up.
"So," he said, mouth full of unidentified mushroom, "where do you guys thing the next horcrux will be?"
Harry sighed as Ron rehashed the same conversation topic as always, but he humored him.
"We know Nagini is one of them, she will always be kept at you-know-who's side, as for the other two, it's a pretty safe bet to guess that they're founder's items, because he always had a deep connection to Hogwarts, and we know that he had access to at least the cup of Hufflepuff. I think at least one of them would be at Hogwarts..." Harry held up a hand as he said that, forestalling the objections of the others, "I know you two don't believe me, but Dumbledore at least taught me about you-know-who, and I think it's safe to say that I know him better than anyone else at this point. He would have seen it as poetic to defile a founder's object and then hide it inside their own school."
"Look, mate, I'm not saying you don't know him well, I'm just saying that there's no way we're gonna be able to break into Hogwarts without Snape noticing us, all the paintings have to report to him, after all."
"Yeah, but what other leads do we have, Ron?" said Harry, running a hand through his messy hair with frustration.
"So we have to wait then, plan it all carefully, like usual. I don't think it would be a good idea to go to Hogwarts without knowing for sure that the horcrux is there, there's too much risk of being discovered and caught, and if a fight breaks out there would be too much risk of hurting the students."
Several days passed, during which the trio planned and plotted an entrance into Hogwarts to look for a horcrux, and theorised about where the last one was, and what it could be. During the evenings, Harry helped Hermione with looking at his cloak, even going so far as to cut a small amount off of the bottom for her to look at, but when they came to measure the length of the cloak they found it to be exactly as long as it had been before cutting, and even more perplexingly, when Hermione tried to cut the small piece up further, she found that she could not. So far, she had only succeeded in ruling out that it was made of any normal material for an invisibility cloak. She could tell it was highly, highly magical, and yet any specifics eluded her, almost as if it was deliberately avoiding telling her anything about itself. Even trying to tell if it was magical using spells was impossible, despite the fact that it clearly was magical, given that it was an invisibility cloak. After many hours of frustrated trying she concluded that somehow the cloak was in fact deliberately resisting her, although whether it was simply spelled to do so, or if it was somehow sentient, she was unable to tell.
Ron wasn't a fan of how they kept looking at the cloak, and he would often interrupt them while they were working on it, saying that they should focus more on the horcruxes, but for the most part his protests were ignored. Harry had raided the book collection that Hermione had brought to try and find something that might help them to crack the secrets of the cloak, but so far all that he had found was a few paragraphs about Death and his hallows as an entity hidden inside a book about wizarding superstition:
Of all the pantheon of gods, none is so interested in humanity as what we call Death, as it is responsible for the end of all living beings when it is their time to go. Death appears to people when it is their time to die, and on occasion will bargain with them. These bargains certainly end in the death of those who undertake them, with very few exceptions.
The Peverell brothers, according to legend, made one such bargain with this entity, and only the youngest brother survived for long enough to pass on his story, which has now faded into half-remembered myth. The legend goes that Death gifted to each brother an item of their choosing, knowing well the characters of the brothers. Two of the gifts resulted in the death of their owners soon after, one being lost to time, and the other, a dangerous wand, writing its way through history with an ink of blood. Only the last brother died naturally, and the object he passed on to his son was said to be a cloak of total, perfect invisibility, resisting all magic incident upon its fabric. This author can confirm the existence of said cloak, having held it in his very own hands for a time.
Harry had pondered the words of the book greatly over the past few weeks, perhaps to the detriment of the search for horcruxes. All that he had found had confirmed his original thought; that Voldemort wanted the Elder wand, and who could blame him! An all powerful wand would be the ideal tool for any dark lord, let alone one hell-bent on dominion of the wizarding world and the subjugation or total eradication of non-magical beings. Voldemort didn't appear to be aware of the origins of the wand, nor of its unnerving tendency to result in the death of the owner when used in combat. It seemed, from history, that the wand would betray its master at the most inconvenient moment, always looking to reach the hands of the most powerful wizard. Very little was known about the resurrection stone, which frustrated Harry. It seemed that the stone had been lost to time, popping up after random intervals before disappearing shortly after the suicide of whichever unfortunate soul happened upon it.
Harry became more and more convinced about the nature of his cloak, the existence of the hallows, and therefore the existence of at least one member of the traditionally accepted pantheon of the wizarding world. Harry did not consider himself superstitious, but considering the fact that not only was magic real but that he owned a sentient invisibility cloak, he wasn't going to discount the possibility. He still hadn't told Hermione that his cloak held no secrets from him, and any spell he cast upon it worked when it had not for her.
Harry had tested the capabilities of the cloak more after learning about it, and he had found that whenever he wanted his cloak, he would suddenly see it nearby, regardless of where it had been left. He had even made Ron try to stun him while he wore the cloak, and the stunner had simply passed straight through him without doing anything. Harry wasn't going to test the shielding properties of his cloak against more dangerous magic for a long time unless he had to because it wasn't worth the risk, but simply knowing that he had a form of magical protection available to him at all times was a great relief.
Ron and Hermione thought that maybe Voldemort had hidden a horcrux inside gringotts, but they had no idea where. They spent a lot of time talking over where it might be, as which of his followers would Voldemort have trusted with a fraction of his soul?
Hermione had suggested the Malfoys, but Ron favoured the Lestranges, for the reason that the malfoys had already been entrusted with a horcrux, and the dark lord probably wouldn't give two parts to one family.
Not that Harry particularly cared, he had his own newfound obsession with the deathly hallows, and more generally Death itself. Harry had recently been convinced that Death as an entity must exist, but he didn't really know what that would mean. Not that Ron could understand his itching desire to know more about Death; his oldest and greatest friend had become oddly distant since the onset of his preoccupation with such things. Even Hermione didn't quite get it. She, who yearned for knowledge more than anything else, did not understand why he wanted, needed even, to know. Harry didn't think she ever would.
Even Harry didn't really understand why he needed to know, not really. It simply felt familiar to him, as though the knowledge was his to take, like it belonged to him. All he knew was that when he wasn't reading about Death or the hallows, his mind itched. The strangely intense crawling sensation had only intensified since visiting Lovegood and first hearing about Death, and it felt irresistible, like the pull of the tides on his mind.
"Harry, we really need to talk."
Harry looked up from the tattered tome in his hands to see Hermione standing over him, and anxious look on her face.
"Then talk, Hermione," Harry had to clear his throat before continuing, as his voice felt weak from disuse, "I'm always here to listen."
Hermione sat down across from him on a sofa, and Ron (who had until this point been standing slightly behind her) chose the squashy armchair next to her. "We really have no idea where the next horcrux is, and we're all out of ideas. Maybe it is at Hogwarts, but we don't think it's smart to go and get that one until we at least get rid of all the others except for Nagini. We're completely lost, and to be perfectly honest your obsession with these hallows isn't helping anyone. You haven't eaten today, or cleaned yourself in ages. We worry about you, Harry, please look after yourself; please help us do the job that was left for us to do!" Ron was sat beside her, nodding along at her words.
"I would have thought," replied Harry, pressing his knuckles into his forehead as if to relieve pressure, "that you, maybe, would understand my need to know. After all, you were the one who first put the idea into my head."
"I know, Harry, and I'm sorry for that, but you need to get a grip! you have a job to do, that nobody else can do!"
"I need more time..."
"To what?" Ron broke in, "to waste away researching this Death bullshit? No, mate, you-know-who is out there, and only we know even the first thing about killing him."
"I'm sure voldemort can handle himself."
The others looked at Harry in shock at his words, before Ron swore softly.
"The name's taboo, or did you forget that?"
Hermione quickly stood up as the wards around their tent crumbled and several cracks rang out. Her wand flashed, and Harry felt intense pain in his forehead before his face began to swell and deform.
"What-" he exclaimed, interrupted by a voice from outside the tent.
"We know you're in there, come out with your hands up!"
AN: the next scene (Malfoy Manor and the escape to Shell Cottage) occurs as in the book.