Harry Potter and the Wrath of the Horcruxes

Chapter 2: Nameless Horror

Harry stood rooted to the spot, mortified. How could this be possible - Neville, the same Neville he had known for six years, was this close to killing himself! He had no idea what to say to his sobbing friend, but he felt he had to do something, anything, or Neville would be lost.
"Neville…" he began, "I really don't know what to say. Really I want to say I'm sorry it didn't work out between you and Ginny, but then again the time I spent with her last year were the happiest I've ever known."
"Well, bully for you!" Neville shouted, now in a furious rage that Harry had never imagined his clumsy friend capable of. Harry again wondered if perhaps this was not Neville, but a Polyjuice impersonator - but the tears scattering in the thin, dusty air said otherwise: this kind of insecurity was just too characteristic of his fellow Gryffindor, though it was certainly something to see his emotions not kept under hesitation. "It all points to my doom of being perpetually alone, now doesn't it!" And now Neville began talking wildly to the floor, darting his eyes and head here and there around his general proximity. "It shouldn't have to be like this. It would have been far, far better for everyone if I had never even been born -"
"Don't say such things, Neville!" Harry cut him off, and suddenly now he himself was crying desperately. "You have to believe that there is one out there for you, just give it some time and you'll find her, I promise!"
"NOW YOU SHUT UP!" exclaimed Neville, now totally resembling a madman, and yet still believably himself. "IT ENDS HERE!"
And Neville drew out his wand and brought it up to point at his own neck. For a fleeting moment, Harry thought his friend was going to say "Sonorus!" but instead, came: "AVADA KEDA-"
Harry had only a moment to react: drawing his own wand, he practically threw it at Neville as he shouted "EXPELLIARMUS!"
Neville's wand parted company with his hand, and Neville himself was thrown off his feet and into the wall under the dim, grimy window. Harry heard a sickening, indescribable noise as the back of Neville's head slammed against the cement. As he slumped down onto the floor and against the wall, fully defeated, a trickle of blood showed itself just under Neville's fringe of hair. Harry walked slowly and apologetically toward his comrade.
"Harry…" Neville choked, in a very weak, barely audible voice. "Thank you… you brought me back to my senses… but I don't think it changed anything… I can feel myself dying… I'm sorry you had to see me like that, Harry." And with a final breath, the noble Neville Longbottom closed his eyes ever so peacefully. Harry felt a lump in his throat as the reality hit him: he had just ensured what he had been trying to prevent. Harry's tears were obscuring his sight to an unbelievable extent… or perhaps he was swooning from the shock. All the same, he could not stop himself from howling into the dead darkness until his throat was sore. Faintly, as if from a distant memory of a former life, he had the feeling that he had friends outside the window - was he indoors? - and it seemed strange to him that whoever they were, they were too heartless to investigate the noise, and therefore unworthy of his friendship.

Slowly, Harry came back into reality and found himself on the cold floor of a dark basement, lying beside Neville's body. His eyes met the blood on his friend's face. The blood had clotted and the bleeding appeared to have stopped. Harry looked to the source of the wound, and pushing back the fringe saw on Neville's forehead a lightning-shaped scar.
Without thinking of why he was doing it, he backed away from the body and clutched at his chest. It was like looking into a mirror: this was what would become of Harry if Voldemort was successful. Completely by instinct, Harry bellowed into the darkness: "Damn you, Voldemort!"

There was a deafening crack. Harry wheeled around to look at Gryffindor's lamp, and noticed that it had been split down the middle, completely broken. How could such a loud noise come from such a tiny object, Horcrux though it may be?
And then Harry understood. This was why everyone was so terrified of hearing or saying the name of Voldemort - it must have been the fear of the possibility of a Horcrux being present, for at that moment, even as Harry gazed in utter horror, a twisted form rose out of the crack on the lamp and shaped itself, though the new shape was no less terrible. Indeed, the fragment of Lord Voldemort's soul from within the dark object had responded to its name as if to a call, and the horrible being at length stood before the young wizard, scarlet snake-eyes glowing, and yet it was not the fully-formed Voldemort Harry had encountered numerous times, nor the young and handsome Tom Riddle; but rather, a median between the two: this particular Horcrux had to have been created not long after Riddle had graduated from Hogwarts.
"Are you the feeble joke that discovered my Horcrux?" the figure hissed venomously.
Quickly as he could, Harry raised his wand, but found to his horror that the shock of Neville's demise had weakened him: he could not perform a blocking spell in time.
Voldemort raised his wand with relative ease, pointing at Harry, and smirked, "Avada Kedavra," lazily, almost as if Harry was not worth a cry. The jet of green light struck Harry, utterly helpless, full-on in the chest. He was dead before he knew what was happening.