Harry had a good night's sleep.
He sort of wondered sometimes whether he should be having meaningful dreams, they happened a lot in the fantasy books he read, but he couldn't remember having any and that seemed like the sort of thing he'd notice.
Without any meaningful dreams, though, he didn't wake up until about seven in the morning – whereupon he yawned, stretched, and wandered out into the kitchen to get some breakfast.
Picking up a cereal packet from the cupboard, Harry poured himself out about half a bowl of Cheerios along with a plastic water squirter. The water squirter he frowned at, but then decided it would just mean some more plastic in his diet and that was probably good or something.
"Morning, Harry," Sirius said, some minutes later. "Have you got any tea?"
"I got some to try," Harry replied, scooping up the last bits of plastic and cereal with his spoon. "There's some peppermint tea?"
"Not really my taste," Sirius decided. "Still, it's your kitchen."
He sat down at the table, and groaned. "I'm not awake enough yet."
"Bad night's sleep?" Harry asked.
"Just tired from dealing with so many kids yesterday," Sirius mumbled into his hands. "I think I just realized I'm not twenty any more."
"You're not that old, Padfoot," Remus called from the bedroom he was using.
"That's what I told myself," Sirius replied. "But I'm refusing to listen, which is very impolite of me."
Ten minutes later, and after having some toast, Sirius seemed a bit more awake.
"Okay, Harry," he said, gesturing with one of the crusts he'd cut off his toast. "Just so you know, the rest of this house is basically dreadful. A lot of what's here is really dangerous, but you're a dragon so you should be okay if you're careful."
Harry nodded.
"Dumbledore asked me to check on a couple of things for him, because I know some of how it works, and Remus wanted to see how good you are at spellcasting," Sirius went on. "But we've got all Christmas Holiday to handle that stuff and honestly it'll probably take a few hours."
"Finding out how good Harry is will take a few hours," Remus corrected. "Doing anything else will take longer."
"Good point," Sirius nodded. "So, what do you want to do first?"
"Well..." Harry began. "Does this place have a library?"
Remus chuckled.
"Yes, but it's mostly full of books about Dark Magic," Sirius told him. "You know, horrible things like curses and hexes and jinxes and dark rituals… and historical romance novels, my mother really liked those, there's at least fifty of them and they all have the exact same plot."
"Which is worse?" Remus asked his friend.
"Definitely the romance novels," Sirius replied easily.
"Well, I could help you clear out some of the next floor up?" Harry suggested. "Then after lunch we could do one of those things you talked about that Dumbledore mentioned. Or we could go out into London to do something, though it is just after Christmas so I'm not sure how many places will be open."
"I'm starting to think I didn't really think this idea through," Sirius mused. "It sounded so simple before I actually thought about the problems that come from trying to live in this stupid place."
He paused. "Not your tent, Harry. This isn't a stupid place."
Harry had been fairly sure that that was what Sirius had meant, but it was good to get a confirmation.
When Harry led the way out of his tent, there was a ragged-looking house-elf peering at it and poking one of the slack guy ropes. He had nothing on but a loincloth, had some scraggly white hair growing out of his ears, and a deep hunch.
"Stupid Master," the house-elf muttered to himself. "Tents don't go indoors, they go outdoors. Bringing in children… he should have stayed in prison, oh, my poor mistress, if she knew… new master's dirty habitses..."
"Good morning," Harry said.
The house-elf jumped, then stared.
"What is a dragon doing in my mistress' house?" the elf demanded. "Stupid dragon… dragons get used for potions ingredients-"
"Creature!" Sirius bellowed. "What did you just say?"
"Is this something all House-Elves do?" Harry asked, tilting his head. "I've only really met three, but two of them have done death threats."
Saying that seemed to get the attention of both Sirius and the house-elf, who Harry assumed was called Kreacher or Creature or something like that.
"I'm a bit confused about why wizards like to keep them, actually," Harry went on, as he wondered about that. "Though the times when that other elf tried to hurt me really weren't very good, and house-elves do do really good cooking, so maybe it's just that wizards don't mind the attempted assassinations if the cooking is good?"
It certainly sounded like the sort of thing people did in Ankh-Morpork.
"...Kreacher does not know what the dragon is talking about," Kreacher said eventually.
"Oh, are you sort of like Gollum?" Harry asked. "Gollum sometimes talks about himself in the third person, and you look a bit like I imagine Gollum looks."
"What?" Sirius blinked. "Who's Gollum? That doesn't sound like a house elf name."
"Oh, no, Gollum is from some books," Harry explained. "Gollum is all obsessed with something he calls the Precious, which is actually a ring that keeps the Dark Lord alive."
Kreacher stared at Harry, then ran off towards the stairs.
"I've never seen him act like that before," Sirius muttered. "He doesn't like me very much."
"Be fair, Sirius, you don't like him much either," Remus said.
"I'm fairly sure he started it," Sirius replied. "I'm not completely certain about that, though."
He sat down on the nearby sofa, rubbing his temples. "So that other house-elf… that would be that Dobby one, right? You said he was worried about you."
"That's right," Harry agreed. "His master wanted to… do something? Dobby thought it was to do with the Chamber of Secrets, but I don't know if that's true or not."
He tilted his head a little. "I wonder if it was because of how there are other non-human students at Hogwarts now."
"Yeah, probably," Sirius agreed. "Old Slytherin is supposed to have wanted to drive out muggle-born students, so who knows how he'd react to a dragon or a sphinx or whatever."
He lay down and put his feet up on the sofa, paused, then reached over to put his shoes on and did it again. "It's a pity Dobby isn't here, we could probably work out who his master is by asking the right questions. There aren't that many wizards… well, in Britain, especially not ones who are rich enough to have a house elf."
"...there's basically two parts to it," Sirius was explaining, crouching in front of Harry. "Or three if you want to be picky. The first bit is actually noticing someone is performing legilimency on you at all, and it's kind of the equivalent of learning to wiggle your ears."
Harry flicked his ears.
"For humans, I mean," Sirius amended, and demonstrated. "Humans can learn to do it if they work out where the muscle is, but it's one we don't normally use so most people can't do it – but that's the only reason most humans can't do it. Once you know how it feels, it's much easier."
He counted on his fingers. "Which number were we on?"
"One," Remus said.
"One, right," Sirius nodded. "The next bit is making sure someone doesn't actually get anything useful. The book I read said that you could do that either by focusing on nothing, so your mind is clear, or by focusing on something irrelevant."
That sounded interesting to Harry, and he wondered if it was more like using a Palantir or more like psychic powers in The Rowan and Pegasus In Flight. Or maybe like something else entirely.
Before he could try describing how those worked, however, Kreacher came back down the stairs.
"Kreacher?" Sirius asked, turning to look. "Where did you head off to?"
"Kreacher went to get the locket, Master," Kreacher replied, sneering. "Kreacher would not expect Master to understand. Master never understands, no..."
"Why were you gone twenty minutes?" Remus asked.
Kreacher looked down. "Kreacher hid the locket, so no filthy thieves would get it. Kreacher forgot where he hid it."
"A locket?" Harry asked. "Do you mind telling us why you went to get the locket?"
"Of course Kreacher minds!" Kreacher replied sharply. "Kreacher has not hidden the locket for ten years because Kreacher wanted it to be a conversation piece! Stupid dragon!"
"Kreacher," Sirius growled. "Manners."
"Manners?" Kreacher replied. "What are manners? Master doesn't say please. Master doesn't say thank you."
Harry turned to look at Sirius, who seemed a bit uncomfortable.
"In my defence," he began, "Kreacher is the sort of house elf who'd have been happier if Voldie was still-"
"Kreacher is not!" Kreacher snapped, pointing one of his long bony fingers at Sirius. "Kreacher does not like the Dark Lord! But new Master never bothered to ask!"
"You don't like Voldie?" Sirius asked, blinking. "Are you serious?"
"Stupid Master should know master is Sirius," Kreacher muttered. "Kreacher is Kreacher."
Remus snorted. "He's got you there, Padfoot."
"Kreacher does not have Master," Kreacher replied, sounding befuddled. "What does the werewolf mean?"
Harry saw the House-Elf give Harry a sly glance, then look disappointed for some reason.
"The locket?" he prompted.
"Oh, yes," Kreacher said, shooting another glance at Sirius. "Kreacher will tell the story to the polite dragon. Kreacher cannot tell any of the family, Kreacher was ordered not to tell, but Kreacher will tell the dragon."
He clenched the chain of the locket with both hands, so it swung gently back and forth. "It was after new Master ran away, because he was a bad boy."
Kreacher paused, glancing at Sirius, and Sirius nodded – a little reluctantly, perhaps.
"I've got to admit, I was quite a bad boy," he admitted. "I… don't regret running away, but I did some things I do regret."
Harry shifted around a little, spreading one of his wings out to cup it around Sirius, and Kreacher went on. "But Master Regulus was a good boy, and he was eager to help the Dark Lord… who was going to bring the wizards out of hiding, to rule the Muggles and the Muggle-borns..."
Remus gasped softly.
"What is it, Moony?" Sirius asked.
"Just… I don't think we ever really confirmed that was what Voldemort was going to do," Remus explained. "If we had, it would have brought the whole ICW down on him like a ton of bricks – statute breaches are taken very seriously, especially on that scale."
"Stupid wizards never thought to ask the Dark Lord or his supporters," Kreacher muttered. "He said. He never kept it secret. They all knew."
"You said Regulus wanted to help the Dark Lord," Harry said, trying his best to keep this on topic because it sounded important – to Kreacher, at least.
"He wanted to help, yes," Kreacher agreed. "Master Regulus joined the Dark Lord, he was so proud, so happy… and one day, he came to see Kreacher. Master Regulus always liked Kreacher."
Kreacher didn't even give Sirius a glance at that point, his gaze focused entirely downwards on the swinging locket, and continued. "He said… the Dark Lord required an elf."
Slowly, the whole story came out. Sirius' brother Regulus had volunteered Kreacher to do what Tom Riddle had wanted, and told him to do whatever he was ordered and then to come home. Kreacher was insistent about the bit about going home, and they soon found out why – there was a cave by the sea, and in the cave was a lake, and the lake had a small island with a basin full of potion.
It was hard to listen to, and Harry thought it was hard to listen to for Sirius as well. Tom had made Kreacher drink the potion, which burned his insides and made him desperately thirsty, and then left him to die – surrounded by water, but the water was full of the undead.
Harry hadn't known the undead were a real thing, or at least not the zombie sort of undead called Inferi, and he wondered how they worked – but only in a sort of distant way, as he heard about the second badly-treated house-elf in the space of about a month and it made him feel angry at Tom Riddle even more than before.
Maybe it was because here he was hearing about it from a victim, and one that Tom had left to die – and who had only survived because Kreacher had followed Regulus' order to come home.
Slowly, haltingly, Kreacher finished the tale. Regulus had gone with Kreacher back to the cave, with a copy of the locket, and had drunk the potion himself – ordering Kreacher to switch the lockets, and then to leave without him and destroy the locket.
And he hadn't been able to make so much as a mark on it.
When the old House-Elf had finally finished, Sirius was quiet for a long time.
"So," he said, eventually. "Was that a more Gryffindor thing, or a more Slytherin thing?"
"Really, Sirius?" Remus groaned. "That's what you took away from that?"
"It's a legitimate question," Sirius protested. "I want to know exactly what kind of mental shift I should be going through about my unexpectedly amazing little brother."
Harry snorted.
"If that's something that's so hard to destroy, it's a lot like the One Ring," he added. "In the book, it took throwing it into a volcano, though I think Gandalf says that dragon fire might work if the dragon fire was hot enough."
"I think we should see what Dumbledore thinks," Remus suggested. "I imagine that's the sort of thing he'd know most about. Would that be all right, Kreacher?"
Kreacher looked at Remus suspiciously. "The werewolf will try to destroy it?" he asked.
"If Tom Riddle wanted it in one piece, we'll do our best to destroy it," Harry promised.
Kreacher blinked his big eyes. "Who is Tom Riddle?"
"You know him as the Dark Lord," Harry explained. "That's his real name. I think Professor Dumbledore said he was a half blood who didn't like that he wasn't a pure blood."
The elf's jaw dropped.
"The Dark Lord was a halfblood?" he demanded.
"That's what Dumbledore said," Harry confirmed.
Kreacher seemed torn, then crossed his arms. "Kreacher never liked him anyway."
The movement made the locket jingle, and after a moment Kreacher handed it over to Harry.
"Polite dragon must destroy it," he insisted. "He must!"
"If it can be destroyed, we'll do it," Harry replied firmly.
Sirius and Remus both agreed with Harry that the best thing to do was to ask Professor Dumbledore about it, and Harry suggested that Remus send a Patronus off to Dumbledore straight away. Remus demurred, saying that they weren't sure if Dumbledore would be alone and whether this should be kept secret, so they decided to send Hedwig instead as soon as she got back from Dean's house.
Harry thought about putting the locket around his neck, so he didn't lose it, but that sounded too much like what Frodo had done and that had made him gradually get controlled by the One Ring. So instead he put the locket in a box, and put that in his tent, and then asked Sirius what they should do while they waited.
Sirius didn't know everything about Occlumency, just what he'd read in a book, and he couldn't do Legilimency so they couldn't have Harry build up the ability to recognize when someone was trying to do Legilimency on him. Harry did wonder if he should learn Legilimency, but that sounded rude and more like the sort of thing an unpleasant dragon would do than the sort of thing a polite dragon would do. Instead, Remus suggested that they should try something to make Harry better at duelling.
That sounded interesting, but no sooner had Remus mentioned the idea when there was a knock at the window. Harry went over to open it, letting Hedwig in, and the snowy owl flew once around the room before landing on the back of a convenient chair.
"Thanks, girl," Harry smiled, taking Dean's reply. "I'm afraid you're going to be heading off up to Hogwarts in a bit."
Hedwig shook a few flakes of sleet from her feathers, and barked testily.
"Not until you've had brunch, of course," Harry amended, checking the time. "It's a bit early for lunch, but if you want to wait a couple of hours we can sort that out."
"I'm not sure we've got anything good for an owl in the fridge," Sirius said.
"Sirius, that fridge had two Boggarts in it," Remus noted. "It took us an hour to clear out the food after that, a lot of it was surprisingly resistant to just being Vanished."
"Yeah, and now there's nothing in there except some Butterbeer," Sirius agreed.
"I'll get some bacon from my fridge," Harry decided.
A few minutes later, Harry had crisped a rasher for Hedwig with his breath – which was much more convenient than getting out the frying pan – and opened Dean's letter.
He sounded interested in the Animagus stuff as well, and asked if it was something that you were allowed to do over summer. That was something Harry didn't know, and he asked it out loud.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure just doing the transformation isn't punished outside school time," Sirius said, looking into the air as he thought. "I remember doing it a couple of times here…"
Dean also said thanks for the shirt, and how he'd been able to show it to his family by having his dad try it on. That was something Harry was glad to see – he knew that Dean's family found magic very interesting, and they didn't get to see much – and it gave him a nice happy feeling which he needed quite a lot after the sad story about Regulus Black.
Then Harry got to the last bit of the letter, and had to smile.
"Dean's got about five different suggestions for what to do with your mother's portrait," he told Sirius, and counted them off one by one. "He says we could put something heavy in front of her, like a cupboard… or remove the wall her portrait is stuck to and put that bit of wall somewhere else… or hang all the coats in front of her… or vanish the wall the portrait is attached to… or cut the portrait out of the frame and reframe it somewhere else. And he says that he's guessing you don't want to just set fire to it."
"If he'd said that yesterday, I'd have been tempted," Sirius admitted. "But… well, Kreacher likes her. I'm wondering if I should do one of those and just move the portrait down to where Kreacher lives."
He shrugged. "Maybe I'll ask Kreacher what he'd like. I think the main thing is just to make it so she doesn't shout at anyone using the front door… or making a noise."
Harry began to write the letter to Dumbledore, deciding to keep it short and just say that something important related to Tom Riddle had happened and could the Professor let them know when he was available?
"Or in general," Sirius added. "Moony, do you think maybe I'm being too touchy about this?"
"You're asking a man who's lived in a flat," Remus replied. "I've had plenty of fantasies about consigning noisy neighbours to the basement."
"Good point," Sirius admitted. "But you do have that soundproofed room."
"That soundproofed room is covered in wolf fur and you know it," Remus pointed out. "I'm lucky I'm not allergic."
"Can a werewolf be allergic to wolf fur?" Harry asked, checking over what he'd written. "That sounds like it would either make things much worse, or it would just mean the wolf side spent the whole night sneezing."
He showed the letter to Remus and Sirius. "How does this look?"
"Looks pretty good," Remus told him. "I'd say that should cover it."
With Hedwig winging her way north with the letter, Remus got on to the thing he'd mentioned before about duelling.
"As I see it, there are two problems that would prevent you from being naturally very likely to win a duel," he explained. "Because, you know, dragon."
Harry nodded.
"Firstly, there's the thing that's a disadvantage," the Marauder went on. "That's that you're a quadruped – so it's harder for you to hold your wand in one… paw?"
"Paw's good," Harry agreed.
"In one paw," Remus resumed, "and still move around in a duel – or, if you have to have one, in a fight."
"In a fight, couldn't he just set someone on fire?" Sirius asked. "Or fly off or something?"
"Flame freezing charms exist, and so do buildings," Remus countered. "And sometimes, people with flame freezing charms in buildings."
"Point," Sirius conceded.
"What's the other problem?" Harry asked.
"Well, it's more of an advantage," Remus told him. "Sort of. Your hide can deflect spells, but unfortunately your eyes can't and everyone knows it – they're the traditional weak point on dragons."
Harry asked about whether the Voonerables were another traditional weak point on dragons, then had to explain how that idea turned up in Guards, Guards, and that was followed by explaining Smaug's waistcoat of jewellery in The Hobbit.
Sirius liked the idea of Harry wearing something to cover his vulnerable eyes, and after a few minutes of discussion they all realized that, actually, glasses probably qualified so that was all right then. And Remus pointed out that Harry could always use a wing as a kind of face shield.
"What about the thing with my having four legs?" Harry said, then. "June and Tanisis are apparently getting on okay. And I don't think I could carry my wand in my mouth, I might bite through it."
"No, I wasn't thinking about it being in your mouth," Remus corrected. "We'll need to practice with it, preferably when one of us visits Hogwarts during term, but I was actually thinking about you having your wand on your tail."
Harry saw where Remus was going straight away. "So, sort of like a Manticore's sting, except I'm casting spells from it instead?"
"Exactly," Remus smiled. "It'll probably be difficult, but it's an alternative to wandless casting."
"I can cast some spells out of my mouth," Harry reminded him. "Just not many of them. I think having a freezing spell would be good."
"Dragons breathing ice?" Sirius asked. "Preposterous!"
There was a sharp pop as Kreacher appeared next to them, holding a notebook in one hand.
"What would polite dragon like for lunch?" he asked, a quill ready to take down the answer.
Harry was a little surprised, and thought about the question. "Um… I'm not sure what you have here?"
"Kreacher is not sure either," Kreacher said. "When Kreacher checked the pantry it tried to eat him. Kreacher is going shopping before making lunch."
Kreacher's first attempt at pasta wasn't very good, but it was the thought that counted. Harry suggested that maybe he should teach Kreacher to make some of the dishes he'd done at Privet Drive, and Kreacher seemed to find the idea a bit strange.
Maybe it was because there weren't any cooking classes at Hogwarts, so most wizards didn't know how to cook, or if they did it was because they didn't have house-elves in the first place.
After that, the afternoon was mostly taken up by a combination of trying to successfully attach a wand to Harry's tail (Spellotape worked if they used enough of it, but it was difficult to do in a hurry, while sticking charms didn't do what they were supposed to) and, after that was written off as impractical for now, clearing out part of one of the upstairs rooms.
There was a big tapestry which had the entire Black family on it, or it had before most of them got blasted at with wands. Apparently anyone who had offended Sirius' mother got their picture blasted off the tapestry, though Regulus had escaped because he'd been sneaky enough that nobody had actually known what he'd done except for Kreacher.
Harry was a bit surprised to see 'Charlus Potter' on there, as apparently he'd married Dorea Black, but Sirius said it was a different branch of the Potter family. Seeing Lucius Malfoy was a bit of a surprise as well, but that made Harry frown as he started checking the names.
"Is everyone named after stars?" he asked. "A lot of people are, but I can see some that aren't."
"Most of the people born into the family are," Sirius agreed. "And before you ask, no, I don't know what was up with Cousin Narcissa."
He looked over at Remus. "There isn't a galaxy called Narcissa, is there?"
"Don't think so," Remus replied, waving his wand to vanish an unpleasant stain.
Then a nest of Doxys came flying out of a chest of drawers, and that sort of occupied them for the next hour or so.
Dinner was a roast, something Kreacher said he definitely knew how to make, and Harry had to agree – it was nice and tasty, and after looking torn for a bit Sirius complimented Kreacher on his work as well.
It had been so much trouble to mostly-clear that one room that they didn't really feel like doing any more of the house, and so Harry dug into his collection of books to find ones that Sirius and Remus were likely to be interested in. Sirius seemed like the sort of person to enjoy a story about heroes and villains, so he got Pawn of Prophecy, while Harry gave Remus Equal Rites because it seemed more like Remus would enjoy a bit of a laugh.
Harry himself was reading a book called Mutineer's Moon, which started with the idea that the moon was actually secretly a giant disguised spaceship. It was odd, but nice, and Harry wondered where it was going to take the ideas in it.
He also wondered when The Last Command was going to come out, the third of the books about Admiral Thrawn, because that was probably going to be a lot of fun to read as well.
Then there was a flash of white light, and a beautiful pearly-white phoenix appeared in front of the three of them
"I just got your letter, Harry," the phoenix said, with Professor Dumbledore's voice. "If it is urgent, then the Floo to my office will be open for the next half an hour; if not, then I think it would be best if you came tomorrow after breakfast. There are of course things more urgent than breakfast, but I leave it up to you to decide."
The phoenix dissolved.
"What do you think?" Remus asked.
"I think it'd be better if we did it as soon as possible," Harry said. "We did promise Kreacher, and it'd be good to know what Professor Dumbledore says."
Nobody seemed to disagree with that, and Harry picked up the locket before following the two grown-ups through the Floo.
When they arrived, Professor Dumbledore was inspecting a collection of dressing gowns held up as if supported by invisible pegs.
"Ah, so good to see you," he said. "Tell me, which of these do you think would go well for our discussion?"
Harry looked from the alchemical-symbol dressing gown he'd seen before, to one which had dozens of threads of brass woven through it, and then to a brilliant blue one which seemed to glow faintly.
"I think any would do, Sir," he answered, and Dumbledore selected one from the rack before shrugging it on over his pyjamas and tying the cord in a bow.
"It's always best to be comfortable when you discuss something important, I find," he explained, before waving his hand to send the dressing gowns away and sitting down in one of the armchairs. "How has your Christmas been, Harry? I must apologize for the socks, it quite escaped me that you might have trouble wearing them."
"That's okay, Sir," Harry replied. "And… well, I met Sirius' house-elf today, and he told us about something that happened with Tom Riddle."
"I sort of wondered what happened to Regulus," Sirius added. "I knew he vanished, but… I wondered whether he'd fought against us. Especially against James."
"Ah, Regulus," Dumbledore agreed. "I remember him well. And no, I do not believe I know what happened to him either."
"We don't know all the details," Harry began, and then laid out what Kreacher had told them – about the locket, and how Regulus had decided to replace it with a fake, and died with an instruction to Kreacher to destroy it.
When he finished, Dumbledore closed his eyes and put a finger to his chin.
He sat there for several minutes, until Sirius coughed uncertainly.
"Is he asleep?"
"No, no, I am quite awake," Dumbledore told him. "I am just thinking about the implications of this. Do you have the locket?"
Harry took it from his pocket, and Dumbledore waved his wand once and tapped the locket. There was a little flicker of red light.
"I see," he said. "It is as I feared."
He looked up from the small object. "Unfortunately, Harry, I must explain something quite difficult to you. You see, I fear you will have to be involved in fulfilling the request made by Regulus Black, and it is something you cannot do yet."
"I'm not sure I understand, Professor," Harry admitted.
"No, but that is a temporary problem," Dumbledore replied. "Easily fixed, though I must ask that you not share it around much – you see, Tom does not know some of this, and he does not know that we know any of it."
He chuckled. "The problem is a Riddle that it took me quite some time to puzzle out."
Dumbledore reached into a pocket, and produced the diary Harry had given him some months ago. "Doubtless you remember this, Harry, but – Sirius, this is something that Harry found in his collection of books before coming to Hogwarts. Neither of us is at all sure how he got hold of it, but it is the school diary of one Tom Marvolo Riddle."
Sirius whistled, then snorted. "What kind of stuff is in there? I know it could be full of really evil stuff, but maybe he had a crush on a Muggleborn from Gryffindor and that's what got the whole thing started?"
"I had a look, and it was empty," Harry replied. "But that didn't seem right – I thought it might be hidden by magic."
"Alas, it is not the diary of a normal school child," Dumbledore replied. "Harry is quite correct. This diary is not simply a diary, but is a black magic object in its own right – and a foul one indeed. It is of a type that can only be created by a dark ritual, which includes the murder of a helpless individual as part of the process."
He looked down at the diary sadly. "I always thought that Tom was a troubled child, but I had hoped that the stable environment of Hogwarts would allow him to put that aside… alas, it has turned out that he was doing terrible things while still in school."
"What kind of dark object is it, Professor?" Harry asked. "Is the locket another one?"
"Well reasoned, Harry, well reasoned indeed," Dumbledore said, with a quick smile. "Both of these objects are examples of what is known as a horcrux. The Horcrux is a kind of home for a part of the soul, that prevents the owner from truly dying so long as the Horcrux exists."
"I understand, Sir," Harry said, thinking about Isildur's Bane. "So does that mean we're going to Mount Etna?"
Dumbledore blinked. "Pardon, Harry?"
"Oh, um, in The Lord Of The Rings there's an object called the One Ring which holds a lot of the power of the villain, Sauron," Harry explained. "He can't die until it's destroyed, but once it's thrown in the volcano Mount Doom he's destroyed. The problem is that the ring is so evil that nobody wants to do it."
"Well, that is interesting," Dumbledore said, thinking. "Though I fear we cannot throw these Horcruxes into a volcano, if only because it would be very hard to get them out again if we turned out to be wrong."
"That is a good point," Harry admitted. "So how will we destroy them, Professor?"
"That may be up to you to do, Harry," Dumbledore replied. "You see, there was a prophecy made shortly before you were born."
"Oh, a prophecy too?" Harry asked, quite glad to be on familiar ground. "They've got all sorts of treatments in the books I've read. One series has a prophecy which speaks to someone."
"This one is a little less loquacious," the Professor said.
"Professor, I don't think Harry understands that word," Sirius interjected. "I know I don't..."
"I've heard the word," Harry said, thinking. "I think it was in an Asterix book, though, and they didn't explain it."
"It means to be talkative, my boy," Dumbledore explained, and went on to tell them the text of the prophecy.
It was a bit vague, really, a lot more vague than the Darine Codex from the Belgarion books or even Boromir's dream about seeking the sword that was broken. But since Harry had been born at the end of July, and he had a lightning-bolt mark given by Voldemort, it seemed clear enough that it did relate to Harry.
"And you think this means I'm the only one who can stop him?" Harry asked.
"Well, you see..." Dumbledore paused, smiling. "I don't think prophecies are all that likely to be true."
He winked. "In fact, I don't believe a word of this one, except perhaps the word 'seventh'. But, as you have no doubt experienced, sometimes you don't have to believe in something for it to work anyway."
Harry nodded, sort of following that.
"So let us recap," Dumbledore went on. "Each of these Horcruxes is a piece of Tom, and we must destroy them if we are to be free of him… but it may be that they all count as a piece of him, and if so you must be the one to destroy each one."
"How is Harry supposed to do that?" Sirius asked. "Eat them?"
"Alas, I fear not," Dumbledore said. "I remain unsure exactly what might destroy a Horcrux, and I believe the only things that could destroy a Horcrux are very powerful magic… for example, I have my hopes for the spell Fiendfyre."
"So I need to learn that spell?" Harry asked.
"It would be most helpful," Dumbledore agreed. "Though it is a tremendously powerful and quite dangerous spell, and I would advise you learn some merely very difficult spells first."
He frowned. "Though it does trouble me as to how many of these terrible things Tom actually created. I have never heard of anyone creating more than one, and here we have two."
Dumbledore was silent again after that, then smiled. "Oh, yes, and I was wondering if you have managed to practice Occlumency?"
"Sirius explained how it works," Harry said. "But he's not able to do the mind-reading thing yet so I can't really practice it."
"Well, I have not practiced Legilimency for some years," Dumbledore confided. "I'm already quite good at it, so I see no need to practice. With your permission, Harry, I'd like to give it a go?"
Harry nodded, trying to blank his mind, and Dumbledore peered into his eyes.
"Legilimens," the Headmaster incanted.
There was a sort of itchy feeling, and Harry blinked reflexively. The itchy feeling promptly went away.
"Well, now, that was quite the interesting experience," Dumbledore said. "I saw a most strange image of a young man with a very large sword, and then I was ejected in less than a second. I must commend your excellent skill."
"I just blinked," Harry admitted.
"And a fine blink it was, my boy," Dumbledore replied with a smile. "If you do that when you are under Legilimency, you shall have nothing to worry about."
AN:
The only thing preventing Tom Riddle from getting the idea from The Lord Of The Rings is that it came out in the 1950s. It is a general mythological thing, though – for example, Kosechi the Deathless is one example.