Thanks to my beta, DaniPotterLovesGod.

I don't own Harry Potter.

For some reason, the two boys never considered not doing as Hermione had suggested. Maybe it was because she hadn't given them time to argue against it, or maybe because they realized that no matter how much they detested paging through endless dusty tomes, searching for obscure pieces of information, the research needed to be done, or Voldemort would remain immortal, and end up victorious.

Because no matter how insignificant something like reading could seem, this particular research was vital to the war's outcome.

Harry and Ron spent an hour reading in the library, researching the founders and ancient magical artifacts. Harry and Ron each made a list of objects still in existence that had belonged to the founders as they worked, as well as the object's last known whereabouts and the owner.

Hermione found them in a secluded corner of the library, took in the stacks of books they had gathered and their surprisingly organized lists, and sat down with a grin. She was finally imparting some of her research habits onto them.

"Any luck?" She asked as she surveyed the titles of the books that were scattered around.

Harry set his pen down so that he could give her a summary.

"We've only come across a few objects. There's Godric Gryffindor's sword; last known location: Headmaster's office in Hogwarts. Hufflepuff's cup disappeared after the death of its last owner, Hepzibah Smith. We know Riddle made that one a horcrux. Ravenclaw left behind several books which are owned by the ministry as well as a diadem, which was actually stolen by Helena Ravenclaw. Helena apparently hid it after she fled Hogwarts and it hasn't been seen since. Slytherin left behind a dagger, which was claimed by the goblins after no descendant of slytherin claimed it and is supposedly somewhere in Gringotts. And there is the locket too, of course, which we know Voldemort had at some point but was obviously replaced with a fake by R.A.B. Other than that, we haven't found anything."

"Here's another book Ravenclaw wrote. It's preserved in the ministry, just like the last ones." Ron said, pausing in his reading to scribble a line of notes about the book on his list.

"I don't think that it is likely that Gryffindor's sword is a horcrux." Hermione said, looking over the list Harry had handed her. "Dumbledore had it in his office for years. And Harry didn't feel anything from it when he used it in the Chamber of Secrets." Harry nodded, took the list back, and put a slash next to the lines detailing Gryffindor's sword.

"What about those books, Ron?" Harry asked after tapping his friend on the shoulder to get his attention.

"Most of them became the possession of the ministry more than a century ago. I don't think Voldemort would have had the chance to make them horcruxes." Ron said, closing the book he had been going through.

"Voldemort didn't manage to beat the ministry in the first war, so he wouldn't have had access to those books. You're probably right, Ron." Hermione said.

"So the diadem might be a possibility, provided Voldemort managed to find it."

"Did the book say anything about where Helena Ravenclaw fled to?" Hermione asked. Harry flipped through one of the books that he had placed to the side, and then stopped on a page with a sketch of a tiara-like object on it.

"Here. It says that Helena Ravenclaw ran away from Hogwarts after stealing the diadem out of jealousy, and hid in a forest in Albania. When a "baron" sent by Rowena Ravenclaw found Helena in the forest, she hid the diadem before refusing to return to Hogwarts with the baron. The baron ended up killing her and then himself, after he realized what he had done. The book says that it is rumored the baron loved her."

"Forest in Albania…wasn't Voldemort hiding in an Albanian forest?" Ron asked.

"But he couldn't have turned the diadem into a horcrux without a body." Hermione said, already far ahead of the red-head.

"No, but he could have gone back for it if he had found it." Harry pointed out.

"Good point. That makes the diadem the best candidate for a Ravenclaw-related horcrux." Hermione said.

Harry flipped to another sheet of paper in his notebook and began scribbling down words.

Diary – Riddle

Ring – Gaunt

Locket –Slytherin

Cup – Hufflepuff

Diadem - Ravenclaw

"If Riddle was trying to make seven, then we only have five." Ron said, skimming over Harry's list.

"Each horcrux required a ritualistic murder to create. He needed time to kill in order to set up the ritual for directing the pieces of his soul into the objects." Hermione murmured after a moment. "It's horrible."

Harry closed his eyes, suddenly having a terrible suspicion.

"What is it?" Hermione asked.

He held his hand, telling her to wait a moment, and the pulled the memory of his mother's murder from his mind. He had avoided this memory, stashing it as far back into his mind as he could. He had relived it enough in nightmares, he had felt, but now he thought he needed to view the memory again, this time taking notice of details.

The flash of poisonous green light streaked for his mum, and she fell to the floor with a scream. Harry nearly pulled out of the memory, but he forced himself to stay.

Voldemort turned towards Harry's baby self, and slowly a cruel grin slid onto the man's face, making Harry feel sick.

"Don't worry, you'll soon be with your mudblood mother, little Harry." Voldemort said, making Harry's name sound mocking. Baby Harry simply stared, wondering why this scary man was in his nursery and why his mummy wasn't getting up from the floor.

Voldemort turned away and began to carve runes into the floor with a spell from his wand. Harry couldn't read them, but he could sense the dark energy coming from them.

Voldemort finished the last rune, completing a figure-eight shape – the shape representing infinity.

The Dark Lord then drew a large leather-bound book from his robes and placed it in one loop of the figure-eight, the loop nearest Harry's crib. Then Voldemort positioned himself in the center of the other loop, and turned to face Harry with another sickening grin.

"Now, my baby Potter, you shall help me on my quest for immortality." Voldemort turned his wand onto himself and murmured an incantation that sent vibrations through the room, and made Voldemort's face contort in some sort of inside pain. He finished the incantation, shuddered, and then took a deep breath.

"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort fired the unforgivable at baby Harry. Harry felt like he was watching in slow motion – the curse was about to hit him, it had to turn back soon…

And then a glowing white light burst from baby Harry, colliding with the noxious green spell and sending it back to its caster. Voldemort only had time to widen his eyes in surprise before the spell struck him and his body disintegrated, and his spirit left the house, screaming.

Magic rippled out in powerful waves from where Voldemort had been just a millisecond before, causing sparks to shoot from electrical sockets in the wall and the light fixture to fall from the ceiling. Fires sprung up around the room as more magic pulsed out, this time even causing some of the heavy furniture in the room to crack from strain.

The fires spread. There was a carpet on the floor, which aided the flames' advance around the room. In just a few seconds the book Voldemort had placed on the floor was engulfed.

The roof began to groan as Voldemort's magic continued to surge through the room.

Harry left the memory just as his baby self began wailing.

Harry shivered as he surfaced from the memory, never wanting to visit again. Back into the far corner of his mind it went.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Hermione asked.

"What were you doing?" Ron also asked at the same time.

"I'm alright. I watched the memory from when my mum…died." Harry paused, getting his emotions under control, before continuing. "When you, Hermione, mentioned how Voldemort had to have time to create a horcrux before actually committing each murder, I realized that the situation when he tried to kill me would have been ideal. It also would have stroked his ego – using the murder of the boy prophesized to have the power to beat him to aid in his quest for immortality."

"And?" Hermione asked, a sick feeling building in her stomach. Harry wouldn't have bothered to explain all of this unless he had found something significant in the memory.

"He was setting up some sort of ritual, definitely. And he had a book with him. It looked very old. I think he was going to try to turn it into a horcrux."

"Do you think it is still there?" Ron asked. Harry sent him a puzzled look.

"In the house. In Godric's Hollow." Ron clarified, also looking puzzled.

"I thought the house had been completely destroyed."

"No, Harry. No one could possibly live in it, but the remains of it are still there, along with a memorial to your parents. Didn't you know?" Hermione asked.

Harry shook his head, his eyes glazed.

"No one ever told me."

Hermione laid her hand on his arm, trying to give him comfort.

Harry shook himself out of his gloomy thoughts after a moment.

"I don't think Voldemort succeeded in making it a horcrux, since he died and I didn't. And, there were fires in the house. I think the book may have been destroyed in them."

"So, Godric's Hollow isn't a likely place to find a horcrux." Ron sighed.

"It might be, Ron. Voldemort has an ego, and from what we can tell, he liked placing his horcruxes in places significant to him. Even though Harry defeated him at Godric's Hollow, Voldemort may place a horcrux there just to say that he'd been defeated, but it wasn't for long, and in the end he'd win." Hermione said.

"What about the other ones? Any idea as to where those could be?" Ron asked.

"I don't think we'll find out where the locket is until we figure out who R.A.B. is."

"So forget about that one for now." Hermione said. "At the moment, let's just make a list of places significant to Voldemort. Maybe we'll find a place he could have hidden a horcrux."

Harry thought for a moment, reciting the facts he knew about the life of Tom Riddle in his head. Which places held importance to him? Which places signified some special moment? Which places had he hated? Which places had he loved?

"Hogwarts."

"What?" Ron asked in confusion.

"Hogwarts. Voldemort hated the orphanage he stayed at. He considered Hogwarts his home." Like me, Harry thought.

"You think that there's a horcrux somewhere in Hogwarts?" Ron asked, his eyes wide. He looked around, as if expecting to see a dark object in that very room.

Harry shrugged.

"It's a thought."

Hermione scribbled "Hogwarts" down on a blank piece of parchment.

"What about the orphanage?" Hermione asked.

"Maybe. He hated it there, but it was an important part of his childhood. He found out that he was a wizard there, after all."

Hermione wrote "orphanage" down too.

"Do you remember the name of it?" She asked.

Harry sifted through his memories, trying to find the orphanage that had been the home of Tom Riddle.

"Wool's Orphanage. It was in muggle London."

"Brilliant. Any other places?"

"What about the graveyard where he was resurrected?" Ron asked. Harry shivered as he remembered that terrible night.

"Very possible." Was all Harry signed, trying to push the unpleasant memories away.

Hermione wrote that down, too.

"Didn't he get his first job at Borgin and Burkes in Knockturn Alley? Could that be a place?" Hermione asked. Harry shrugged.

"Worth a shot." Ron replied.

Another line on Hermione's list.

"And we know that he already had hidden a horcrux at both the Gaunt house, and the cave. We can rule those out." Harry said. Hermione nodded.

"So we've got Hogwarts, Wool's Orphanage, Riddle Manor Graveyard, Godric's Hollow, and Borgin and Burkes. That's five." Hermione summarized.

"Enough for his remaining Horecruxes." Ron said. "That's brilliant."

"Well, we can wrap up now. We've got enough to at least start looking." Hermione said. Harry and Ron both nodded agreement, Harry stretching out his arms.

"I'd say we've got about ten minutes to make it to Transfiguration."

Ron groaned. "We'll have to run there!"

"Let's get started then." Harry replied dryly.

Harry got a note at lunch, asking him to meet McGonagall after dinner. He sighed. He had a DA meeting right before dinner, and he had been hoping that after the meal he would be able to relax, or maybe continue his delayed reading on Parselmagic.

It seemed that was not to be the case.

"What does she want?" Ron asked, reading the note over Harry's shoulder. Harry eloquently shrugged. The best idea he had was that McGonagall wanted to find out the truth about Harry's magnificent accomplishment in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and to discover how Harry had managed it.

After all, he reminded himself, it wasn't every day that a student, seventh year or no, managed a corporeal patronus. Unheard of that the student managed it silently, let alone without a wand.

Harry smirked as he remembered this.

"You didn't do anything, did you?" Hermione asked, concerned that Harry had done something against the rules. Harry rolled his eyes and waved a hand in the air. Of course not, the gesture said. He tucked the note in his bag and resumed eating,

"Harry! I did it!" Neville shouted gleefully that night, as everyone practiced expelliarmus. Silently, of course.

Harry walked over to where the Neville was practicing with Padma Patil. The girl was picking up her wand from the floor, looking a little surprised, and Neville was staring at his wand as if he'd never seen it before.

"Really? Can you try again?" Harry asked, drawing Neville's attention from his wand.

"Ye…Yeah…" Neville stuttered. He turned to Padma, who was watching them.

"Harry wants us…"

"To try again, I know." Padma finished for Neville, smiling at Harry. "I've been studying sign language." She explained, and Harry's face lit in a grin.

"Thanks, Padma. It means a lot."

The girl accepted Harry's thanks with a nod of her head, and it struck Harry how much more sedate she was than her gryffindor twin, Parvati. Mentally, he shrugged. Parvati was a gryffindor; she was bound to be fierier than Padma, a ravenclaw.

"Alright, now, could you try it again, Neville? I'd like to see."

"Ready, Padma?" Neville asked. She nodded, and Neville readied his wand.

A deep breath later and Neville was swishing his wand in the well-rehearsed movements for expelliarmus. Padma's wand tugged at her grip, but the spell didn't have enough power to completely disarm her.

"Try again, Neville." Harry said. Neville nodded and took his stance once more, setting his face into a determined expression.

This time Padma's wand went flying out of her grip. Neville jumped up and down in victory, a grin spread across his mouth.

"Brilliant! I knew you could do it." Harry said, after clapping Neville on the back.

"Nice one, Neville." Padma congratulated.

"Thanks!" Neville said.

"Just keep practicing until you can do it easily. Then you'll be ready to start working on the more advanced spells with Hermione, Michael, Ginny, and Cho."

"What will be next?" Neville asked, curious about what he would be doing once he'd fully gotten the hang of the disarming spell silently.

"Stunners, Cutters, and Petrifiers."

"Sounds hard." Neville commented.

"Not too hard." Harry replied, shrugging. "It took me a few weeks just to summon a broom, or levitate a plate. I didn't start combat spells until a few weeks before coming back to Hogwarts. You've actually been doing pretty well."

Neville beamed at the praise.

"Harry! Michael is ready to move onto something else!" Hermione called from across the room.

"Got to go." Harry signed quickly. Neville nodded, and Harry dashed away.

Michael Corner was probably the most powerful student in the DA, aside from Harry. He had been progressing through the spells Harry set him rapidly, taking only a meeting or two to master a spell silently.

Harry was beginning to think he should start Michael on the sixth year defense spells as opposed to the third and fourth year spells the rest of the group had been studying; the ravenclaw was that good.

Harry trudged to the Headmistress's office that night, having just wolfed down his dinner of roasted chicken with potatoes and Yorkshire puddings. It had been delicious, but Harry hadn't taken the time he would have liked to enjoy it, due to his meeting with McGonagall.

He signed the gryffindor common room password to the gargoyle, and the stone creature jumped aside to let Harry pass onto the ascending staircase.

"Come in." McGonagall called when Harry knocked.

"Good evening, Mr. Potter. Have a seat." McGonagall said as Harry entered the office. Harry nodded his thanks and plopped into a cushioned chair, setting his book bag down beside him.

He raised his eyebrow inquisitively, hoping that the Headmistress would tell him why she had called for him.

"I do know a little sign language, by now, Mr. Potter, but I'm afraid I'm not up to your standard yet. For now, I think you had better write down your responses." McGonagall said, straightening a few items on her desk. Harry nodded and withdrew his notepad and pen from his book bag, and clicked the pen open so that he was prepared to write.

"First of all, how have you been managing in classes?" McGonagall asked.

"Fine. The professors don't really call on me, except for Professor Weasley, and if I decide to answer a question another student has to translate. It hasn't really been a problem, though." Harry wrote, afterwards showing his message to McGonagall.

McGonagall nodded as if this was what she had expected.

"And none of the other students are giving you trouble?" the Headmistress asked.

"Nothing I can't handle, Headmistress." Harry wrote, thinking how Hermione was still thinking of some way for him to circumvent his vow.

McGonagall raised an eyebrow at his response, but continued in her questions.

"I see. Mr. Potter, although I am interested in how you have been managing, the main reason you are here is because I wished for a confirmation of something Professor Weasley told me about today's defense class. Is it true that you cast a wandless corporeal patronus?"

Harry grinned.

"Yes."

"How?"

"I succeeded with my first intentional wandless spell this morning. I felt ambitious in Defense class and managed it. It started off as a simple shield-form patronus, but then when I put more magic into it, it morphed into my stag."

"Only this morning?" McGonagall asked, seemingly a bit dazed. "Which spell was your first success?"

"It was a levitation spell on a feather."

"Something so small…do you know how this is possible?"

"I have connected to my magical core, Headmistress."

That was enough to make McGonagall lean back in her chair, a perfectly stunned expressions painting her features.

She didn't speak for a moment.

"That is supposed to be nearly impossible, Mr. Potter. Only Dumbledore had connected to his core recently, as far as I know. It takes immense power."

Harry nodded, showing that he knew what she had just stated.

"And you…when did you accomplish this?"

"Nearly two weeks ago, Headmistress."

"You do realize how dangerous that was?"

Harry nodded.

"Why did you do it, knowing the risks?"

"I think that Voldemort has also connected to his core. A connection to your magical core is the only way to truly master wandless magic, and Voldemort is capable of quite a bit of wandless magic. I need to be on even footing with him."

"You took all those risks just for the chance to have a better chance of defeating You-Know-Who?"

Harry nodded.

"I also think that since he is a Parselmouth, he will have at the very least dabbled in Parselmagic. That is the next thing I will be studying."

"Parselmagic is considered dark, Mr. Potter. Besides that, you would be incapable of performing it." McGonagall said sharply.

"Why should I be incapable, Headmistress?"

"For one, you aren't a Parselmouth. The only living one is You-Know-Who. Second, you are mute." She certainly was blunt. His mention of supposedly "dark" magic had apparently alarmed her.

Harry realized that Dumbledore must have placed his spell on the staff as well. Should Harry let her in on his secret? It wasn't as if she would hand him in to the ministry for it, but her reaction probably wouldn't be pleased. On the other hand, if she knew, then she would still be able to be his counselor, or sorts. Harry didn't delude himself. He knew that he needed someone experienced to help him along, and without Dumbledore, McGonagall was his best option. If he wanted her help, though, she would need to know about all of his abilities.

"Headmistress, I need someone to help me through this war. I am only seventeen – yet I must defeat Voldemort. Dumbledore was my guidance, and now that he has been murdered, I need someone else to help me. You are my best option."

"I will certainly be happy to aid you in any way I can, Mr. Potter. But I think that you should stay away from dark magics."

"I have no intention of becoming a dark lord, Headmistress. However, I do have to seize any advantage I can gain over Voldemort. He is an experienced and powerful wizard, and anything I can do to increase my odds of winning I will do. That does not mean I will sacrifice my morals. I want your help, but you will not be able to help me unless you trust me." Would he be able to trust her with his plans?