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Harry Potter: Thinking like a Thief.

When the day came to kidnap Voldemort, essentially stealing him, Harry was almost disappointed by how easy it was. Not only were the house-elves getting past whatever defences Voldemort had put up around his headquarters, which turned out to be Malfoy Manor which surprised Harry at first but in the end, he felt it made sense; with Lucius and Draco both dead and Narcissa long since gone, the manor was totally empty and from what Harry had learnt over the last few weeks since he had come up with his frankly insane plan to kidnap the Dark Lord and send him to the Ministry of Magic, Voldemort was distracted with something involving the Department of Mysteries on top of dealing with the logistics of building up his forces.

It made sense he was making use of Malfoy Manor, but Harry would have assumed Narcissa had sold the place. Clearly, there was some kind of arrangement that kept Malfoy Manor from being sold off or purchased for a specific amount of time, which explained why Voldemort was still there.

Voldemort, according to the house-elves, was frustrated by the lack of funds thanks to Harry's efforts and he had been trying to find some kind of advantage to use while the ICW investigation was still ongoing.

The Dark Lord had been keeping a close watch over the investigation for months. Harry could imagine Voldemort was both happy and annoyed by the investigation, seeing the advantages it would have since it would tie up the Ministry for a while, but the longer it went on it simply caused more problems for him to build up his armies and get financial support without needing to worry about it going unnoticed.

"Are you ready?" Harry asked the five house-elves, Dobby among them, who was the most logical choice because he knew Malfoy Manor better than most, although he had a few of the Malfoy elves with him. They and Dobby were going to be a part of the group who'd take Voldemort to the Ministry of Magic.

"We is, Master Harry!" The elves said at the same time.

Harry nodded, saying nothing about how they called him 'Master Harry,' deciding instead to focus on the task at hand. "Remember what I told you; get straight there, then take him to the Ministry of Magic, go in there without being seen, heard, or noticed. Don't worry about telling me; thanks to one of you, I've got a two-way mirror inside the Ministry. I'll know when he's arrived. Go carefully. Don't take any risks."

The elves nodded solemnly, and they clicked their fingers and disappeared, leaving Harry alone in the Room of Requirement. He took a deep breath and walked over to the table he had summoned with the Room. On the surface of the table were the books covering the Hogwarts and the second two-way mirror which was connected to the one within the Ministry of Magic. Harry smiled at the sight of the mirror. It was a great tool to use, especially to spy on businesses, kind of like a simple camera.

Harry fidgeted a little, feeling his heart rate speed up a little bit. He just…watched the view on the mirror, waiting for the house elves to do their part in this war. He wished he didn't have to make them do this, he really did, but he couldn't sneak through Voldemort's wards and take him to the Ministry of Magic without the Dark Lord noticing.

Oh, sure, he could probably get through the wards but he couldn't drag the wizard into the middle of the Ministry of Magic. It was too much. Thanks to Dobby or one of the other house-elves, Harry could have done it but he needed Voldemort far away from himself so he could cast the spell. It might not exactly be the Gryffindor way to kill someone when they were far away or get somebody else to use such tactics, but Harry didn't care nor did he see anything wrong with what he was doing. The house-elves had been told to go unnoticed and unseen and unheard into Voldemort's headquarters, but he hoped nothing happened to them.

This was just one of those times where he wished wizard magic was much more versatile than it was in real life because he could just wish Voldemort into the Ministry, but if he did that then Voldemort, being a wizard himself no matter what he had done to twist himself, would have the same power but he was just frightened he had inadvertently signed off the death warrant of the house-elves.

Am I becoming like Dumbledore? Harry thought to himself worriedly. Choosing who lives, who fights….

No, Harry quickly killed the thought; Dumbledore might play games with people, he had played a real-world game of chess using people as the pieces like he had shaped his own reality and life on the game of chess, using real-world wars and events as an excuse for saying things like sacrifices needed to be made when he had no idea what a true sacrifice was.

Harry on the other hand just wanted the war to be over, and while he was making the house-elves do this he was doing it all for a good reason. Harry was still wrestling with his conscience - it was hard to believe that he had one at all, considering he was a thief, but the house elves had won a special and warm and dear place within his heart, and he didn't want to lose them - when he saw and heard the panic of the people in the atrium.

Voldemort had appeared.

Harry watched as the Dark Lord, looking confused and worried and even a little fearful about arriving in the Ministry of Magic without knowing how, quickly got over himself while the people in the atrium ran and tried to hide when they realised Lord Voldemort, You-Know-Who, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, or the Dark Lord whom Cornelius Fudge and everyone like him believed was dead, was right there, in the Ministry of Magic, they raced for cover. Harry shook his head in contempt when he looked on and saw this latest example of how cowardly British wizards were; thanks to the inconsistencies of their Defence tuition, their approach was to simply duck and hide and wait for the aurors without thinking the aurors might not be up to snuff, as he could see. This was the trouble with wizards, really; they liked to brag about how good they were, but deep down they were all incompetent idiots whining for someone to protect them.

But the ICW investigation team was made out of sterner stuff. It only took a moment for them and Voldemort a moment to adapt to the new situation before an all-out battle erupted, while the British workers watched in awe and in panic.

It was time. Harry took a deep breath and he lifted his wand, summoning a full-length mirror to appear before the table so he could find the scar accurately to see what he was doing the first time around. Harry jabbed the wand at the scar and he began incanting the spell; it was an ancient Egyptian text that he had fought long and hard to get the right translation, but thanks to several language spells it was easy for him to master rather than flounder. He didn't want to incant the spell and make some kind of stupid mistake.

"I call the soul parts of Tom Marvolo Riddle. From the North, the South, the East, and the West, I call upon all of you. Assemble and be drained!"

Harry felt a rush of magic surging through his body and flowed into his wand arm into his scar. He could feel the horcrux within his scar stirring. It fought the magic as it began to tear it out of his forehead. The horcrux put up a good fight, but the magic was too strong and it was torn out of the scar.

Harry gasped in agony, and he almost lost his hold over his wand as the pain became too much, but he realised that the spell was only half done so he let it continue. He could feel more of the horcruxes scattered around the country although he couldn't see them; one of them was in his scar, another was in the Room of Requirement, one was in a living thing, but it was hazy and he couldn't be sure if he was right, another was in a dark, dusty place surrounded by other pieces of accumulated junk, another was surrounded by heaps of gold coins that were likely Galleons - a Gringott's vault? - and lastly, the soul piece that was in Voldemort's body.

Somehow he felt the main piece of soul and another which was in the vault that he'd perceived were the ones putting up more of a fight, but in the end, even they could not fight the overpowering nature of the ancient spell.

He listened as Voldemort screamed in agony as his soul was torn out, the same piece of soul which had skulked around forests for so long after his original attack on the Potters, and he forced himself to look at the two-way mirror. Voldemort's body was falling apart with black ashes falling from him into a pile on the ground. Harry flinched as he felt rather than saw the horcrux leave his forehead losing its power until it just disappeared. He knew instinctively the same thing was happening to all of the horcruxes.

Finally, it was all over.

Lord Voldemort was dead.

Harry staggered back, absently dropping his wand in the process - the sound echoed throughout the Room of Requirement, echoing so starkly in the otherwise silent room, wishing for a bed to appear. Harry was so tired. He had just used a lot of his magic just to summon the horcruxes and drain them of their own magic. His head was swimming and as he looked around he could see his vision dimming, and he felt that he was going to drop like a stone onto the ground at any moment. Pushing aside the fatigue with some effort when he realised he needed to have a comfortable sleep to rest, Harry used the last of his mental strength to wish clearly for a bed to appear. The effort only sapped more of his mental energy and he barely noticed anything until he fell onto a bed and he was out like a light.