The network of narrow, dusty alleys resembled the web of a giant carnivorous Acromantula. The rain finally started to pour down, and a thick fetid fog crept out of the lowland, enveloping potholes and ditches. If sticking to the previous description, then Mudblood robes would seem like a rainbow compared to the surrounding area.

Harry turned his head around. The house was right where Aunt Petunia had said it would be – a sloping signboard saying 'Pawnshop' to its right and a warehouse door secured with a heavy rusted padlock to its left. It seemed that nothing had changed here over the years – and would not change for another hundred years, until it all fell into ruins. Yes, his aunt was not exaggerating when she stigmatized this squalid slum. Harry had difficulty imagining how a child who grew up in such an environment could make friends with his mother, whom everyone spoke of as a cheerful, vivacious person.

Of course, after spending several years in the cupboard under the stairs, it was not for him to wrinkle his nose and snort contemptuously. Still, Harry looked around doubtfully. Perhaps, despite his wand pointing at her, his aunt had decided to play a trick. Had he wasted almost two hours in vain and found just a random fleapit forgotten by all the gods? Hermione and Ron must be sick with worry by now; nevertheless, he just could not help but take the chance. After all, his friends had no need to collect other people's memories bit by bit just to get to know their mothers! He would apologize to them, and they, of course, would understand, although Hermione would inevitably notify him that he was a total bonehead. But all of this would be later, and now:

"Quanticio."

No one.

Harry peered into the muddy windows. Most likely nobody had lived here for a few decades – so many of his parents' contemporaries had died in the first war with Voldemort that it was impossible to guarantee that the same fate hadn't befallen his mother's mysterious friend. Raised in dark times, he could have become a Death Eater, or vice versa – a member of the Order of the Phoenix, or maybe just went to the wrong place at the wrong time and disappeared during one of Voldemort's sweeps.

The boy's heart sank with disappointment – it would have been better to have known nothing about this man at all than now, after two hours of searching and hoping, to be forced to turn around at the closed rickety door and return home.

No, he couldn't just walk away.

"Alohomora," Harry whispered so quietly, that he did not hear his own voice. He felt ashamed of himself.

Looking around and not finding any signs of observers in the sticky fog, the young man stepped inside, expecting to see the bare walls of an abandoned house. Yet, his eyes first saw a long narrow corridor, and behind it a small dark sitting room: although rather gloomy for living, it was still quite habitable. A wretched, greasy-stained armchair, a crooked, battered table, and endless shelves of books that stretched all the way to the ceiling. Harry whistled in admiration – if Hermione were here, she would have pumped herself full of Invigoration Draught to stay awake for a month.

He reached for a book and was greeted by its indifferent, thin, empty pages.

Second book – same story.

The third one could not be torn off the shelf at all.

Well, quite sensible. It looked like the books would not reveal themselves to anyone but the owner.

Harry, however, was not upset by this. He slid his gaze over poorly painted walls, a grime-coated ceiling, the chipped mantel covered with a pile of dusty goblets: 'Hogwarts. Gobstones Champion. 1945', 'Hogwarts. Duelling Club Master. 1975'… There were at least a dozen cups – Harry did not read the inscriptions on all of them.

Either the owner of the house had broken all records for time spent in school, or this mantelpiece contained the achievements of at least two generations. Judging by the fact that the boy had told Lily about magic two years before receiving the letter, his parents must have been wizards. But Harry could not imagine a pure-blood family nestling in this vile cesspool. No, one of the boy's parents was obviously a Muggle. So, he was a half-blood…

A half-blood that came from such a backwater – he would have had to make friends at Hogwarts immediately; otherwise he risked being bullied by Slytherins, and, perhaps, even Gryffindors. Harry remembered the discovery he had made in the Pensieve with Snape's memory and hastily pushed those thoughts away. Thinking of his father's school escapades gave way to a brutish pain engrained in him a year ago. Never mind, judging by the duelling master cup, the mysterious owner of this house could stand up for himself.

Done with reasoning, let's consider the facts. The house said almost nothing to Harry – the books could have belonged either to Lily's unknown friend or to his wizarding parent. As for the rest, the bits of information were so scattered that they could not be framed into a single picture even with all of Harry's yearnings: a poor district, an alleged status of a half-blood, a good knowledge of combat and protective spells. That was all. Harry could only hope that those skills had helped the mysterious stranger survive in the first war with Voldemort and that they would not fail him in the second.

It was time to go back. Harry walked along the dark narrow corridor, looked into the kitchen covered with clouds of dust, and tried once more to remove the stubborn book from its shelf. He hoped that if he managed to shift it, a secret passage would suddenly open just like in a classic gothic movie. But the book remained in its place and no passage opened.

Though, why make it so complicated?

"Alohomora."

He felt the move of magic, barely perceptible yet obvious. However, nothing happened.

"Alohomora!"

No effect, again.

You are going mad, Harry. You have overfought, overstudied and overdisguised. You break into other people's houses, touch their stuff and try to find non-existent secret passages in their living rooms. You are the Boy-Who-Lived… and Gone-Out-Of-His-Mind.

He walked towards the room's exit – it was time to stop this madness. If the owner of this house had been a friend of his mother, he should at least have some respect for him. For him and his memory. After all, if he were a pure-blood and lived in a manor matching the size of Malfoy's, would Harry have dared invade his house, gutting his library? Poverty did not diminish the right to be respected. Harry knew this better than anyone.

However, it was better to indulge in lofty reasoning while sitting in a comfortable chair holding a glass of chilled butterbeer, rather than pacing around a cluttered room. Lost in his thoughts, the young man stumbled over a fold of the worn carpet and collapsed onto the floor, slamming his wrist hard against the rough side of a bookshelf. His skin pulsed as if on fire, scratched by small splinters protruding from the wooden surface.

"S-s-salazar's dirty underpants!" Harry hissed with pain, examining his bleeding hand, but immediately he felt it was necessary to add: "Sorry."

In his mind's eye, a sad medwitch shook her head wearily, confirming her earlier diagnosis: "Harry, it's even worse that we thought – you are talking to the walls now…"

What is interesting, however, is that they answer you…

Indeed, with a slight groan, an entire book section moved aside, revealing a secret passage.

Harry remained sitting on the floor. For almost two whole minutes he and the wall stared at each other in amazement, mouth and aperture open in surprise. Harry came to his senses first. It all was clear – he had already experienced something similar in Voldemort's cave. The door was enchanted for the owner, and the boy's 'Alohomora' worked only in combination with his blood. Although Harry had no idea what purpose the house owner was pursuing – the blood loss from his scratch was ridiculously small and clearly could not weaken 'an enemy'. Perhaps there was something specific in his blood that made the passage open?

Done with racking his brains, he would give it some thought later, or the wall – his silent interlocutor – may change its mind.

He trod carefully into the aperture and was greeted with the musty smell of old wood. The steps under his feet crunched as if aged joints and sagged resentfully. It looked like no one had used this part of the house for decades. A crooked corridor resembled the insides of a giant dead animal. Another ancient staircase, two rickety doors.

One clearly led to the parents' bedroom: a wide double bed with no canopy, a chest-of-drawers with a cracked, tarnished mirror, a heavy wardrobe on menacingly thin legs, the carved doors of which squeaked softly, swaying from the movement of air.

The second door was barred on the outside with a rusty bolt. Behind it Harry found a small room that looked more like a disciplinary cell – a tiny, heavily cobwebbed window that was almost up to the ceiling; a legless chair leaning against the wall; a shaky folding-table spattered with countless old ink stains.

If mother's mysterious friend spent his childhood here, Harry could consider himself Rockefeller – in his bedroom the window was, although barred, at least wide enough to dispel the stuffiness of his confinement. In addition, he had a solid writing desk, not this pathetic semblance of a school desk written off for its uselessness.

The boy was beginning to understand why the owner had closed this part of the house and chose to ignore it…

Rage rose in him like water in a sinking ship, flooding every crevice, splashing in his fingertips. Rage at the child's parents who had lived here, rage at himself for intruding so unceremoniously into those memories that hurt their owner. It was even more despicable than sticking his head into Snape's Pensieve – the latter was also not a thing that Harry could be proud of, but at least the bastard nature of the Potions Master gave the young man a good reason not to suffer from too much shame.

He would leave right this second and no longer disturb someone's cupboarded skeletons. If this person was dead, let him rest in peace, just like Lily. If he was alive – Harry would come again when the war was over. If it was ever over.

Hastily, trying not to even touch the railing, as if fearing to do more harm, he ran down the creaking stairs, tormented by remorse and guilt. And froze.

Under the stairs, some of the narrow wooden panels were positioned not vertically, but horizontally, defining a door.

"Just dusty mops," Harry told himself, listening to his heart thundering in his ears. "Some cleaning supplies that've shrivelled into a lump from old age, sheets torn into rags and buckets that've become a shelter for mouse nests."

Yet as he started opening the door, he knew that he was lying to himself. Knew for sure because he had spent ten years of his life in such a cupboard. He hooked a panel with his nails (the handle was torn off), pulled it, opening a small gap, squeezed the tips of his fingers in and pulled again…

The cupboard was larger than its brother at the Dursleys', allowing him to stand slightly hunched over, but it was narrower. There was no bed – Harry assumed that the child had slept in his cell upstairs, but here, under the stairs, he had created his own little world.

A crookedly knocked box full of dusty books – Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe, a copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2, a Rune Dictionary (he had seen similar, but reprinted, at Hermione's), encyclopaedias Fauna Britannica and Plants of the Scottish Highlands. Several pages torn from a Muggle magazine were pinned to the wall. One showed raging waves swallowing a rocky shore, the other – a small islet overgrown with pine trees, towering in the middle of a bay or a wide river. Presumably, those pictures were intended to decorate the bare, gnarly walls. The dust had settled on them so thickly that Harry could barely distinguish colours.

Spiders had tightly packed all the items in the cupboard with their webs, as if they had covered them for safekeeping after the owners had left. Harry could bet that it would take him a very long time to clean his robes. Having wiped clean all the corners in the house, he now looked like a cobweb ball floating in the air.

And then he noticed a photograph and, forgetting about the dust, sank powerlessly onto a shabby sofa cushion that had once served as a chair.

A fragment of the photograph, the left half of it, hung on the inside of the door. Harry knew perfectly well why: so that the one who suddenly opened this flimsy door from the outside would not see the image, and it was only visible to the one who was closed inside. In the picture was his mother – he had not seen her so young before, about twelve years old, no more. She was dragging someone else by the hand into the frame, the ripped edge did not allow to say whom. The girl was laughing, and her unruly hair fell over her eyes. Her companion kept trying to escape from the frame – maybe in the original photo he did not enter completely, but here, on this fragment, only his thin shoulder in standard school robes was visible, with his palm tightly squeezed by Lily's fingers.

Harry shook his head as though waking from a stupor. Now everything fell into place. He understood it all: why the front door opened for him – Lily's son – with a simple 'Alohomora', why a drop of his blood was enough to reveal the passage hidden from others... Perhaps without suspecting it, the owner of these treasures loved Harry's mother.

The boy felt an idiotic smile stretching across his lips. After all the sharp, cruel, poisonous words thrown at him by his aunt today, he did not even suspect how important it would seem to him the simple fact that, despite all her envious lies, someone loved his mother. Of course, many people loved her – teachers, friends, parents, his father, but that was different. They did not have a cupboard under the stairs; they did not have treasures hidden in the corners that others would consider rubbish. But he, Harry, and that mysterious boy who stubbornly did not want to get into the frame had it all. And both of them – both! – loved Lily. And there was something absolutely magical about it...

Suddenly, Harry's attention was drawn to a washing-powder box, hidden in the shadow of a far corner and securely covered with threads of spider silk. He reached out his hand, brushed the sticky puffs away and, forgetting to check it with 'Malus revelio', pulled out a whole pack of paper sheets folded in half.

No, he would not fall so low as to read other people's letters. Yet a tenacious glance had already snatched at the end of the page a curl of a lily in place of the signature. And the next thing he knew, he was digging into the lines of one letter after another. Some of them were short notes, others were whole messages, written in a rounded, girlish handwriting:

…At first I didn't want to leave a note in the tree, because Petunia says that you are a liar. But yesterday I glued my mother's vase, which my kitten broke, because I was very afraid that mum would punish him. The vase just stuck together – that's all. It was magic, right?…

… We can play non-magical games so Petunia can participate too. I asked her to play Indians, and she chose the name 'Moonlight'. In my opinion, it doesn't suit her, but if she likes it...

…Brave Raven, I still haven't received the Letter. My father, the Grand Chief, doesn't believe that I'll receive it at all. If you lied to me about Hogwarts, about the fact that you are a wizard and that I can perform magic – I will kill you, and even coyotes won't be able to find your bones on the prairie!...

…I think you'll be assigned to Ravenclaw – you already know so much about magic. Or Gryffindor because you are so brave. I'm scared – what if the Sorting Hat decides that I'm not suitable for any House, and sends me back home?...

… I came to our old playground. They've cut down our tree, imagine that! They say it was blown down by the wind. It's good that now we can send each other letters with owls, right?...

… Will you help me with summer Herbology homework? It seems that I've overestimated myself, taking on this project, and now I need your help...

…You acted just like a Gryffindorian yesterday, even worse. Why did you start that fight? Those freaks would have laughed at me, and nothing more! They wouldn't dare attack so close to the police station. I'm really sorry! If I had learnt the healing spells, I'd be able to fix your nose myself. Look, maybe we'd better fly to Hogwarts on a broom so Madam Pomfrey could heal you? What if it's going to be too late in the autumn? I've heard that if the fracture heals itself, in Muggle style, nothing can be fixed! I don't want you to have a broken nose as a reminder of me…

… This is where I'd like to be now – on this islet in the middle of a river. Someone is sitting on this rocky shore right now and just looking at the water. Imagine that?...

The next letter made Harry pause. It was written in pencil, clearly by the other hand, crumpled and crossed out like a failed draft. But this was not what made him stop – the letter was written in runes. Only Hermione studied them among his friends. After thinking for a few moments, the boy hid the letter in the pocket of his robes, and returned the rest, carefully covering the cardboard flaps of the box.

There was only one question left.

He returned to the living room and walked straight to the fireplace with a dozen goblets on its mantelpiece. Quickly looking through them, he found the one he was after. It was a standard, gold-plated cup that every student of Hogwarts received on their graduation. There were five of them in the Burrow – Molly's, Arthur's, Bill's, Charlie's and Percy's. All, as one, decorated with the Gryffindor lion. Nothing was depicted on this goblet, yet every Hogwarts first-year knew that if you say a few special lines over a cup, the coat of arms of the graduate's House would appear. Well, let's find out where mother's friend ended up: Ravenclaw or Gryffindor?

"Lion, Badger, Eagle, Snake… Lion, Eagle, Badger, Snake…"

Damn. The words flew out of Harry's head like frightened owls. There was definitely no intellectual connotation – a simple, childish quatrain that made even Dumbledore's opening speeches at the beginning of a year meaningful by comparison.

Never mind, Ron would definitely remember it.

Harry pocketed the goblet next to the runic letter and hurried towards the exit.

XXX

As soon as he entered the Gryffindor common room, something shaggy and wet threw itself on his neck.

"She'd almost started writing your eulogy," Ron said, watching sympathetically as Harry awkwardly patted Hermione sobbing on his shoulder. It was well past midnight, and the girl had spent the last five hours going through all possible horrors that had happened to Harry. Miss Granger had always had a rich imagination.

"You are a total bonehead," Hermione snuffled, finally pulling away.

"Bring the locket," Harry said, grinning as he watched his friends' eyes widen with amazement. Ha! He could still surprise them!

It took them fifteen minutes to get to the Room of Requirement and sit in a circle right on the floor. Then Harry finally laid out his main prey – a sharp poisonous fang.

"Is this a basilisk fang?" Ron whistled.

"No, a horn of a mountain goat. What kind of an idiotic question is that?"

"Harry, why the attitude?" Hermione bridled at his remark like bees over a disturbed hive. "We were waiting for you all day, were making assumptions. What happened?"

"Dumbledore entrusted Aunt Petunia with this fang..."

"Did Aunt Petunia give it to you?"

"Who else?"

"Well, I don't know. You left in the morning. We thought you got into trouble! It would take two hours at most to take the fang and return! And it's almost one a.m. now!"

"Oh, I'm so sorry I didn't let you sleep! I forgot you had a lot to do without me – have breakfast, lunch, dinner, read a book, visit Snape in the dungeons. Not overworked, I hope?"

"'Visit Snape'? I'd like to see you visiting him! It's not you who has detention with him every evening!"

"Yeah, I noticed you return exhausted – hands bleeding from book pages!"

"Stop talking to her like that!"

"And what feat have you accomplished today? Gave up a serving of potatoes in favour of starving elves?"

"Why, of course, I don't stand a chance against the Chosen One. It's only you who overextended yourself, taking the stinking fang from your Muggle aunt!"

"At least I found a weapon to destroy the Horcruxes, but what do we need you for? An appendage? We don't have enough food to support you!"

"SILENCE!" Hermione suddenly yelled in a voice that even Snape would not use to warn about the impending explosion of a cauldron, and, grabbing the fang at lightning speed, she plunged it into the locket.

Harry's forehead was slashed by such a pain as though a new Avada Kedavra was burning a second scar. He covered his face with his hands and screamed. His voice mixed with another, even more desperate cry, which could only be emitted by a creature on the very threshold of death. Then everything calmed down and Harry fell into darkness…

"Harry! Harry!"

"Maybe 'Rennervate'?"

"Better smelling salts."

"Where do I get smelling salts?"

"We are in the Room of Requirement, Ronald. Just ask for them."

Harry threw all his strength into making an articulate sound:

"Nellingoltanks…"

"What did he say?" Hermione asked.

"'And yelling old Shanks,'" Ron reported with a hint of doubt in his voice. "Should I ask the Room for your cat as well, Hermione?"

"No smelling salts, thanks," the subject of their disquiet finally muttered and made an attempt to sit up. Four hands immediately reached out to help. "Can you see my scar?"

Hermione's thin, cool hand lifted 'Neville's' fringe.

"No. Does it hurt?"

"Thought there would be a split right along it, and I'd splashed my brains all over your robes," Harry managed to focus his eyes and saw that Hermione's cheeks were wet again.

"It wouldn't spoil my robes appearance much," the girl smiled through her tears.

Harry turned his gaze to the floor – there, next to the broken, blackened fang, lay the twisted locket.

"That ruddy Horcrux tried to embroil us!" Ron's eyes flashed angrily. "May Salazar screw it!"

"Already did," Hermione stated with a smile, wiping her eyes and red nose with her sleeve. "Or, rather, Salazar's pet did."

"Are you sure it's..." Harry thought for the most appropriate option and stopped at the obvious one: "dead? What if –"

"It's dead," Ron drawled. "Now it's just a dead piece of iron with a hole."

Harry nodded. From the recent pain, there was a slight nausea, which was melting away with every minute. Memories of the conversation preceding the fainting began to appear clearly in his memory, as if from a fog.

"Ron, Hermione, you know I didn't mean what I said when we –"

"Of course we do," Hermione answered for both of them and turned to Ronald for confirmation. He nodded quickly. "We need to keep this incident in mind when we find other Horcruxes and ways to destroy them."

Harry broke into a smile at her categorical 'when'.

"Thanks," he said. "If it wasn't for you, we'd have broken each other's noses."

The mention of a broken nose reminded Harry of the visit to his mother's mysterious friend's house. The story took almost half an hour.

"And now I need your help," Harry finished his tale, handing Ron the cup and Hermione the rune letter. "I don't remember the verse and I don't know the runes."

"How are you still alive?" Ron chuckled. "Without such knowledge."

"Quite complex runes," Hermione frowned in concentration. "It's not urgent, is it? I'll take a look when I'm a bit more freed up."

"Yeah, sure. I've managed to live without it for seventeen years," Harry shrugged. "Besides, this is hardly my mother's letter, rather an unsent draft that –"

His explanation was interrupted by Ron – solemnly raising the cup to eye level, he proclaimed:

"Lion, Eagle, Badger, Snake

Studying wasn't a piece of cake.

Four noble Houses tend to vie.

Find out: which one I hide inside."

The outlines of the coat of arms slowly began to appear through the surface of the metal. The friends almost knocked their heads together bending over the goblet.

"Whoa!"

"Hm. Unexpected, isn't it?"

"You said 'brave and clever'?"

"The Hat must have had a really rough day if it sent him to –"

"Hufflepuff!"

From the gilded cup a well-fed badger looked sideways at them...