Harry Potter: Thinking like a Thief.
"NNNNOOOO!" Harry roared, his eyes flashing with burning magical power as he blasted a number of very large pots he'd summoned in the Room of Requirement. The pieces of pottery smashed into a thousand tiny pieces under the overpowered blasting curses.
But it wasn't enough. He imagined pieces of glassware, more pottery, even wooden statues of Voldemort, Dumbledore, Umbridge, Fudge, and basically every single person who had pissed him off over the years, and it was one hell of a long list.
He tore the legs off of Voldemort's statue before blasting the head of the wooden sculpture of the Dark Lord into splinters which he waved away from his body with a flick of his wand.
He turned on Dumbledore, and he fired off a spell chain towards the Headmaster's wooden depiction. Long conjured nails with tips sharp and heavy enough to pierce concrete and brisk. One of the nails embedded itself inside the wooden Dumbledore's head and it passed through the head so fast it would be envied by a javelin thrower before it hit the wall. A few more blasting curses tore off chunks of the statue's arms and legs and chest, but Harry became more creative with Dumbledore's wooden statue, he transfigured the legs into cloven hooves before he gave the head goat horns before he blasted the whole thing to pieces.
By the time Harry was finished he was panting and breathing heavily, he didn't normally expend this much energy when he became angry but he had become so sickened by his discovery and what it meant, he had dropped his occlumency barriers and he had let his anger take control. He had decided it was a better way of dealing with everything and then going through his churning thoughts afterwards. Harry closed his eyes and thought about what he'd just discovered.
How would you feel if you suddenly realised what was going on? Harry had known for years there was an idea, maybe not a plan in the traditional sense of the word when you took into account Dumbledore's poorly thought out plans and agendas, behind the Boy-Who-Lived.
He had never believed that Voldemort had attacked him for no reason, and he had suddenly defeated the Dark Lord. How could he? He had been a kid, and he didn't have any memory of the whole mess. He had always believed the magical world was unbelievably cruel to call him a hero when his family had died, only to dump him at the Dursleys, but he had always wondered if it was part of a long term plan. Dumbledore might excuse it all by saying it was for his protection, but when you shoved a defenceless child who couldn't fight back against a family of magic-hating muggles, then what was being protected?
Harry ground his teeth together at the thought.
A weapon.
Dumbledore didn't give a damn about him, he never had. All he cared about was finding a way to fight off Voldemort. Oh, he could understand, perhaps even appreciate the old man had been shoved into a corner, but a lot of it was his own fault. It was clear to him now that Dumbledore truly was responsible for Voldemort's rise to power.
If it was all part of a plan to bolster his own power, image, or whatnot, Harry didn't know and frankly didn't care. But all he knew was the old man was playing a game. A dangerous game. A game of fire.
In the aftermath of Umbridge's arrest and subsequent trial in the works, Harry had gone straight to the Room of Requirement where he had been trying to learn more about the horcruxes, this time focusing on how to detect them and how to destroy them. There were a few methods. One of them was to basically scry for the soul pieces. All he needed to do was to think about what he was looking for, cast a quick spell to make the scrying spell more sensitive and a map to detect the horcruxes. He had even begun practicing the whole thing, only to discover there was a lead in Scotland. He'd gotten a map of Scotland. Only to discover the horcrux was in Hogwart's little corner of Scotland before he tried to narrow it down thanks to the Marauder's Map before discovering the Map couldn't help him. Harry had learnt enough about the Marauders to know they had never discovered the Room of Requirement but they had mapped the corridors near it, which gave him the lead he needed.
The horcrux was in the Room of Requirement with him, but the Room was a pocket reality. It contained many domains, wormholes that summoned the objects unwitting passers-by wanted. It would be virtually impossible for him to track it down within the domains unless he thought of what he wanted to say. But luckily Harry was creative, his time as a thief had given him a sharper mind. All he had needed to do was to ask the room to bring all of the horcruxes made by Lord Voldemort in the Room of Requirement to appear. The result, he had gotten an elaborate tiara. He had discovered it was a horcrux.
He had taken the horcrux out of the Room of Requirement for the night and he put it in a conjured leaden box which he put in his trunk. But during the night he had suffered through one of the worst visions he had ever had.
Voldemort was angry, really angry. He had been sending a vision of a long corridor with a door to Harry through his mind, and he had been sending Harry memories of his parent's last moments when Harry had instantly started to fight back; he didn't know what was on the other side of the door, but he didn't care. He was not playing one of Voldemort's games. He already had one powerful wizard with borderline insanity doing that, why would he want another?
Unfortunately, Harry had tried Voldemort's patience when he showed Voldemort the memory of the destruction of the diary and what he'd said to Voldemort's younger self. Voldemort had been incandescent with rage when he realised the diary had been destroyed, and Harry had barely managed to get out of there alive. But what made him happier was no one had heard him scream; he had learnt the value of having silencing wards around his bed. His throat had felt it had been torn to ribbons, he had never screamed so loud in his life, and he's had a blinding pain in his forehead.
But once the pain had died down although his head was still throbbing, Harry had realised something important. His occlumency was strong, he could keep both Snape and Dumbledore away from his true thoughts, but legilimency required line of sight to work. So how could Voldemort do this to him when he was miles away?
Suddenly, Harry felt like such a fool. Suddenly, everything began to make sense. He had never understood why his scar always ached and sent searing pain through his mind despite his occlumency barriers, and it was like those visions over the summer holidays where Voldemort was killing that old man with Crouch and Wormtail nearby as witnesses were just passing through his mind like the barriers weren't even there.
So, armed with that, Harry had gone to the Room of Requirement, checked the horcrux detecting spell and discovered his scar contained a piece of Voldemort's soul. When he made that fateful discovery, Harry had sat down. In a way, he couldn't believe it, but it all made sense to him. He had been studying occlumency for a long time, and with that knowledge he had enough knowledge of legilimency theory, he knew there was no way the snake-faced freak of nature could ever do it.
It was horrifying, yes. It all made sense.
All those visions. Those pains in his head whenever he felt Voldemort nearby. They were because that filthy bastard had put a piece of himself by accident. But that wasn't what had made him lash out for the last hour.
Voldemort likely didn't even know about the horcrux, but Dumbledore likely did. The old man had probably known from the moment he'd dropped him off on the Dursleys doorstep. With that new knowledge, Harry had time to think about what Dumbledore planned to do. He had not liked where his mind had gone. There weren't that many books that detailed what horcruxes did. There were a few books which said you had to destroy the vessel a horcrux was kept in with little on how to actually find them, but he had found in greater quantities Ancient Egyptian and Persian magic books and scrolls which described, in detail, how to find and how to destroy a horcrux. Dumbledore likely didn't know about them, or he had the kinds of books that said you had to destroy a vessel.
Dumbledore had been manipulating his life to end Voldemort. He had likely pushed Harry's parents down the path where they would be killed, leaving him an orphan, only for the old man to swoop in and dump him on the Dursley's doorstep to replicate Tom Riddle's childhood. Harry had quickly come to understand and comprehend why Dumbledore would take such steps, but the old man hadn't even tried to come up with a way of getting the horcrux out. That was what had made him so angry.
He had it all worked out in his mind. Like Sherlock Holmes, Harry had looked at all the facts before he had lashed out in a fit of rage.
Voldemort came after him and his parents, killing them both because of a prophecy. The same prophecy his mother noted in her diaries.
Dumbledore put him with the Dursleys to stop any interference, knowing what he would be treated like crap.
Harry arrives in Hogwarts, Dumbledore ensures he's spied on, limited in knowledge although that didn't stop him, and he's shoved into one dangerous mess after another.
Dumbledore knew much more about Harry's 'destiny,' but the way the old man had done nothing about the horcrux….
Suddenly he'd seen it all, Dumbledore was setting him up. After all, it was all he had done for the last few years, setting him up and dropping him into the deep end. And he didn't have a problem with sacrificing people for his own gain. But Harry remembered how so many people had died pointlessly, all because that old man and people like him had just taken a step back and let Voldemort kill and attack over and over again before he stepped in, but Dumbledore's approach was to sacrifice a kid who should be enjoying life, instead of getting down and dirty.
But the problem was, now he knew there was a horcrux in his scar what was he going to do about it? Dumbledore likely knew about it but the old fool had done nothing about it. He was more of a liability than a help. If he was stupid enough to tell Dumbledore about his discovery, would the old man wipe his memory, deeming the information on a 'need to know basis' rather than do anything about it, believing that he, Harry, was not ready or that he even needed to know the gory details.
But what could he do?
The ICW could be informed, but would they know anything about horcruxes enough to know what to do? Would they listen to him, or would they try to kill him, believing there was only one sure way of destroying them when they discovered the significance? Would they support him as he set up the ritual and the spell needed to end that psychopath? Harry groaned as he thought about it. He thought up a chair and a padded leather armchair appeared out of nowhere. Harry sighed and he sat down in it and he leaned back as he thought it through. The ICW investigators who'd appeared in the school when they took Umbridge away seemed reasonable enough, he reflected, but he had to remind himself that he hadn't really spoken to them.
No. It was too much of a risk.
Even if they could be trusted, he would be potentially putting himself at risk, but if he did tell them what Voldemort had done, he would be held at their mercy. What else could he do? Could he set up some kind of trap for Voldemort in a public place, such as Hogsmeade and unleash so much magic there would be no way the Ministry couldn't ignore it? That seemed a bit too extreme. It also seemed pointless. He had no idea where Voldemort was likely to be anyway. And even if he did, how would he reveal Voldemort's presence to the magical world, because that would be a major blow to Voldemort right now. As he sat back and took a deep breath, he looked at his options. He didn't have many.
Choice number one; he could tell the ICW about the horcrux in his scar. If he did that he would need to have somebody nearby like Dobby to spirit him away if they tried to kill him.
Choice number two; he could do something about it himself. That one he felt comfortable with, but unfortunately Voldemort would likely not be discovered by the ICW until after the event.
Choice number three; alternatively, Harry could try to lure Voldemort into a trap.
As he thought through the options, Harry admitted to himself the only choice which seemed good enough was Choice number two. It was the only practical plan he really had. He looked at it every other way, but at the same time there were other things that Harry would like to see with the plan; Voldemort being revealed to the world, new opportunities. At the same time, Harry wanted revenge against the Dark Wizard. He wanted to make Voldemort pay for everything that he had done, but in a subtle way. He wanted to steal from Voldemort…. Unless… No. He couldn't. Could he? Harry leaned forwards his mind overtaken by what he had just thought about, going over the options he had, and every scrap of cunning that he had and he even thought about ways of bringing his knowledge of crime to bear.
He suddenly had a new choice, and it was one that took choice number 3 and turned it over its head while working with choice number 2.
It was a bold plan. Dangerous, but bold.
What if…. He stole Lord Voldemort?