Chapter 16
Don't Tell Us if You Don't Want Us to Go
James woke up at a quarter to midnight and noticed that Harry and Ron had already left. He got up and woke Sirius as quietly as he could. Sirius' sleeping habits were very strange. If you needed to get him up in time for class, you'd have to dump a bucket of water on his head, but if you wanted to wake him up in the middle of the night, all you had to do was whisper in his ear.
When Sirius was awake, they got dressed and headed for the Room of Requirement. They met Lily in the common room and walked to the seventh floor with her. They entered the enchanted room and found Hermione, Ginny, and Ron sitting in comfortable-looking chairs around a small fire.
"Where's Harry?" James asked.
"He'll be here in a minutes," Hermione replied.
The six sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes until Harry showed up.
"Sorry I'm late."
"So what is the deal with the horcruxes and what does Voldemort have to do with any of this?" James asked.
"Voldemort is at the center of all of this. He is the reason we have been researching horcruxes. Before I tell you about the horcruxes, I need to tell you a few other things first. I assume you remember what Voldemort told you about the prophecies?" James, Lily, and Sirius nodded. "Voldemort was right. The second prophecy told I would be the one to defeat Voldemort. Dumbledore told me this at the end of my fifth year. Last year, Dumbledore called me to his office a lot. The reason for all these visits was to study Voldemort's past. When Voldemort was at school here, he asked Slughorn what a horcrux is. A horcrux is an object that contains a piece of someone's soul, but the only way to put your soul into the object is to murder. Everyone that has done this, has split their soul in half only, but Voldemort, because of his greatest fear, split his soul into seven parts." Lily gasped. "There were six horcruxes to begin with. The seventh piece lies within Voldemort himself. Dumbledore and I destroyed two of them. Hermione, Ginny, Ron, and I have worked all year to figure out what the horcruxes are and where they are located. We finally finished the work today and are preparing to leave right at the start of Christmas Break."
"But you told Remus you were going to wait until the end of the year to do it. He was going with you," James said.
"I don't want the last of my father's friends to die. He's not coming with us."
"So where are the horcruxes and what are they?" Lily asked.
"There are four horcruxes left. A cup belonging to Helga Hufflepuff, a locket belonging to Salazar Slytherin, a snake called Nagini, and Godric Gryffindor's sword. The locket is at the Malfoy house, the cups areat the bottom of theBlackSea, the sword is now in the hands of Voldemort, and Nagini is at Voldemort's side."
"Does Voldemort know you're doing this?" Lily asked.
"Yes, he figured it out. That is why he came here to take the sword away from my reach."
"And, you four are going to find these things by yourselves with Voldemort knowing you're doing this, which makes it even more dangerous?" Sirius asked.
Harry nodded.
"No, you're not," James said. "I'm going with you!"
Harry's face turned to stone. "As much as I would like that, it can't be done. You have to stay here. We don't know when the spell will wear off that sent you here or if we have to do something here to send you back."
"Harry's right," Hermione said. "We don't know what kind of problems you being here will cause."
"So, we're problems?" James said.
"No, James," Harry said. "I just don't want to risk getting either you or Lily or Sirius killed. You need to return to your own time. I need to be born and I need to be able to do this now. You have to stay here."
Lily stood up and walked over to Harry. "If you wanted to leave us behind, you shouldn't have told us where you were going."