Harry Potter and the Wrath of the Horcruxes

Chapter 3: The Victims

Harry's body lay there in a slump, face-down. Voldemort slowly advanced, gloating upon his victim. Being a Horcrux Voldemort, he did not know who Harry Potter was or his significance, but something in the recesses of his mind told Voldemort that he had just accomplished an incredible feat by destroying this seemingly weak boy. He kicked the body over with his foot, and looked into the hollow eyes locked in an eternal death stare.
Clearing some dust away from before his face, Voldemort presently noticed Neville's body. He walked over to investigate, wondering if perhaps there had been two boys in that basement with him, and his Avada Kedavra spell had been powerful enough to kill them both with one hit. His foot brushed against the clock Harry had bought in Diagon Alley, and looking down, he saw the clock face. Suddenly, with a bewildered expression, he turned back to face Neville's body, and then back again to the clock.
"That can't be right…" Voldemort said to himself, under his breath.

When Harry came to, he found himself in a world he did not know, and yet it was so very distantly familiar. He seemed to be on a dirt road in the center of a rural area, but there was no one in sight. It was dusk, and a thin mist lay upon the world. A low, brown mountain could be seen a mile or two off through the skeletal fog. There were some scanty trees on either side of the road. The way Harry felt, there was nothing for it but to move along the path in front of him and see where it took him. Almost without his knowing it, his feet began to move forward.
He had not gone far when he encountered a curious tree on his right, the largest and most exotic-looking tree he had seen on his mysterious journey. At once, as he gazed at this tree and its abundant fruit, which appeared to be a sort of golden pear, it occurred to him that he had been traveling for hours… or was it days? But before he could decide the duration he had been in this strange world, he noticed a boy not much older than him, asleep under the boughs of deep, rich green leaves, with his back against the tree-trunk.

It was Cedric Diggory.

Harry nearly jumped out of his skin, and immediately Cedric's sleeping form awoke and spoke directly to him, not at all surprised to see Harry standing there.
"Hello, Harry," it said. "It's been a good long while, hasn't it? I've been waiting. And I'm not the only one. Come. I will show you the others."
Harry was still in shock, but his body responded without a command from the brain, and soon he was following closely behind the figure of Cedric, which was leading him further down the path. Before long the path curved, and Harry saw that it was leading towards the brown mountain on the left. When they reached its feet, they began to climb without hesitation. It was not until they had scaled the first half of the slope that Harry realized he was not the slightest bit exhausted for the climb, nor, come to think of it, from the walking before that. He did not have time to ponder the meaning of this, for the ground became fairly level and a tiny opening could be seen in the mountainside. Cedric squeezed in through this, and Harry after him. When Harry dusted himself off and looked around, he saw that they were in an enormous cave, far bigger than the mountain could have seemed to hold from the outside. Harry had encountered this sort of thing before, when he stayed in the Weasley's tents at the Quidditch World Cup (though it now felt like something out of a distant dream rather than a true memory), and he wondered if there might be magic involved in this.
"No, this is not magic," Cedric said to him. Harry turned quickly to his companion. Did Cedric just read Harry's mind… or had Harry simply spoken his thoughts aloud? Cedric only smiled, and turned his gaze upon the ceiling of the vast cavern, except that the ceiling was so high it was utterly lost to the darkness. Harry had another strange twinge as he realized that the whole time, it had not been too cold nor too warm, but what he considered to be the perfect temperature, inside this cave and outside.
"This is not magic," Cedric repeated. "This is the afterlife, Harry. You're dead."

Back in the world of the living, Severus Snape was having a heated discussion with Draco Malfoy. They were in what appeared to be a dungeon passageway. Cold flagstones paved the walls and the floor, and the torches in brackets on the walls burned low, giving a very scanty light. Draco was following behind Snape, who seemed to be in a frantic hurry. They were speaking as they went along.
"How many times do I have to tell you, Draco?" said Snape in a desperate voice less oily and smooth than his usual tone. It did not become him. "If we don't find it soon, the Dark Lord will eat us alive! You do enjoy living, do you not!"
"But we left without a word!" Draco protested. "For all my mother knows, I could already be dead! Couldn't we just go back and let her know --"
"You always were a momma's boy," scowled Snape. "No, we cannot. It would ruin everything. Just you wait until we finish this, and you can sit on your mommy's lap all you want."
Draco looked like he could kill Snape right then and right there. All the same, he swallowed and contorted his face to hide his malcontent, and the two passed like shadows into the darkness beyond the torchlight.

Harry and Cedric descended a small slope from the cave entrance and began to walk across the floor. Everything about them was shrouded in darkness, yet they could see one another plain as day. After some time a bright figure came into view on the very edge of Harry's sight. It grew slowly and constantly, until there was no doubt that Professor Dumbledore was approaching the pair. But as he got closer, Harry realized that this was a much younger Dumbledore, an adult only just barely.
"Harry, Harry, so good to see you!" said the young Dumbledore in his soothing voice which was hardly any different from his voice as an old man. "There is much to be done. And we must be swift, if we are to be successful."
But Harry did not take any of this in. He had been choking up, with tears springing to his eyes, and without hesitating any longer embraced his old mentor.
"Professor, there's so many things I want to tell you! That locket we brought back, it wasn't-"
"As I'm sure you have gathered, we have no time for that," responded Dumbleore, looking down at his former student with a soft smile. Harry understood and they came apart. "There are others waiting patiently. Let's not disappoint them."
At these words Harry realized what "others" meant. A sudden excitement of joy came into his heart. Sure enough, it was not long before the trio came upon his godfather Sirius Black, and James and Lily Potter, standing before a sort of dais with a small square marble stone and a blue beam of light emanating straight up out of it, encompassing the whole of this stone.
Tears once more came to Harry's eyes, but at a look from his parents and godfather, he understood that they meant to say also that there was no time for a joyful reunion. At last, Harry's father spoke:
"It's not only us. There are more."
And with that, a crowd seemed to form around them. Harry recognized Amelia Bones and a woman who looked like she could be Hannah Abbot's mother. There were many others besides these, so many in fact that Harry was certain that here stood all of Voldemort's victims (aside from the Death Eaters such as Igor Karkaroff), from both that time period, and the former period of Voldemort's reign of terror.
"It is time," said Cedric, and reaching inside his robes he pulled out one of the pears Harry had seen on the tree outside, but now Harry noticed that the fruit was not only gold, but if seen from a different angle, appeared silver, or a mixture of both hues. "We need you to stand on that stone, and eat this fruit," Cedric continued. "If all is done right, we will all be back in the Light World. We want to help you eradicate Voldemort, but we could not return by ourselves. You see, Harry, you really are the Chosen One. You are the only one who could help us return."
Determination swelled up within Harry, and at once he took the fruit and stepped into the beam of light. The throng crowded around the dais. Harry raised the fruit and opened his mouth, but a thought suddenly struck him.
"Wait a second -- where's Neville?"