Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Two: A New Plan

Daphne dug up Pythia from her bag and opened the book to a random page, as usual focusing on the shape of the letters rather than any specific words.

"Hello," Pythia said.

"Hi. I was wondering something. Can I see things at a distance? Like, for instance, where the Horcruxes are?" Daphne asked.

"Scrying is very real, however it's not something I can help you with," Pythia said. "It's counted as Divination, but in reality it has very little to do with it. You can use formless Divination in a similar way to scrying to find out where something could be given some set of circumstances, but real scrying is ritual magic and can be used by anyone. The tricky thing about scrying is that getting the ritual right is such an involved process that you essentially already need to know the thing you're trying to find out in order to set it up. Basically, it's useful only to confirm things, not to learn anything new."

"So what if we already think we know something? Like a Horcrux hidden at Hogwarts?"

"Even then, you would still need to have the specific information of where the Horcrux is before you can scry on it. Using formless Divination to find out the probability of a Horcrux being there under the assumption Hogwarts was important to Voldemort will likely give the same outcome as trying to set up a scrying ritual for it."

Daphne looked away and sighed. It was just what she'd been afraid of. Scrying wouldn't be able to help them find the Horcruxes, then. Or, well, Horcrux. She was fairly convinced that Harry was right about there being a Horcrux at Hogwarts, and they'd have to get to that before they went after Nagini, but before they could entertain that thought, there was one additional Horcrux to find, and as of now, there were no leads to go on.

So what could they do? Just sitting around wouldn't solve anything, but going to random places all over the country without direction wasn't much of a plan, either. If they assumed that the Horcruxes would be hidden somewhere important to Voldemort, then a logical step would be to find out more about places that Voldemort considered to be important.

But who would know anything about Voldemort and be willing to talk? Even the Death Eaters, who claimed to know him well, were nothing but lackeys, not friends. She doubted that even Snape would be privy to the kind of information that would help locate the last Horcrux, and even if he was, she couldn't ask him about it. Snape, as far as Daphne was aware, didn't know about the Horcruxes, and she couldn't tell him. As powerful as his Occlumency was, if Voldemort discovered the plan, they were done for.

What, then, remained? All his supposed friends from Hogwarts had become Death Eaters and wouldn't talk, nor even know anything, and according to Harry Voldemort had disappeared for a good number of years after getting his hands on the locket and the cup, during which anything could have happened.

And, of course, there was no reason at all to assume that he'd remained in Britain during those years. In fact, he'd met up with Wormtail in Albania, of all places, and the mere thought of getting there and finding out what Voldemort had done there was so daunting that Daphne put it aside. Besides, even if he had traveled all over the world, there was nothing to prove that any place he visited had actually become important to him.

Perhaps it was her Divination, but it felt like the mystery Horcrux would be in Britain. After all, all the others had been. Would she be able to sense the Horcrux, perhaps? But no, that wouldn't work. To sense the locket, she'd had to hold it. The moment she let go of it, she didn't pick up on its presence anymore at all.

They would need help, that much was clear, and preferably it had to have been someone who knew Voldemort back when he was still Tom Riddle. If they could find out something as small as Voldemort's favorite ice cream flavor, they might have something to go on. But would anyone be willing to talk? Or was that a step too far already, and should they just focus on finding any Hogwarts graduates from fifty years ago? Surely, plenty of them were still alive. Voldemort couldn't have murdered everyone who'd been at Hogwarts with him; he probably wouldn't even know most of them personally.

But they might very well remember him. After all, everyone knew Harry, even though Harry didn't know them. And Tom Riddle had been one of the most brilliant students ever at Hogwarts, so he was sure to have been relatively well-known even back then, at least by the time he was in the higher years.

That meant that anyone who had graduated Hogwarts from around 1940 to 1943, at least, and likely a few years later, even, would've known him, or had a chance to know him. Since his Slytherin friends had likely all become Death Eaters it would be pointless to look for them, but Gryffindors were usually fairly familiar with the Slytherins around their year because of their eternal rivalry…and Gryffindors had bravery as a core trait, so they'd probably be confident enough to talk.

So, when everyone gathered in the dining room again for lunch, Daphne said, "We need to look for Gryffindors who graduated Hogwarts around 1943."

"Isn't that the year Riddle graduated?" Harry asked.

Daphne nodded. "It is. Since Gryffindors and Slytherins tend to hate each other on principle, I'm hoping some of the Gryffindors from back then — if they're still alive — might know something about Riddle from his school days. Anything at all that might give us a clue as to where he might have hidden a Horcrux. Even if it's just three people mentioning the same thing, or something."

"That could take months, though," Hermione said. "Tracking those people down, hoping they'll be willing to talk, and then finding out if anything they said would be useful to us…"

"I know," Daphne said. "But I honestly don't know what else we can do. We can't start hunting Death Eaters and interrogating them, because we'd either have to kill every single of them or run the risk of Riddle finding out what we're up to; we know he can break Memory Charms, after all."

"How d'you intend to find those people, anyway?" Ron asked.

"Well…I guess we'll need to ask at least some people in the Order of the Phoenix for help," Daphne said. "We won't tell them why we want to know what we want to know, just that we want to know it. I'm sure Mum and Dad and Sirius and Remus would help us without too many questions."

She shrugged helplessly. "I don't know how else we could find out any names, unless there is some kind of public record of who graduated from Hogwarts in any given year."

"It's probably going to be our best bet," Harry said. "We don't have any leads and sitting here every day talking about it isn't going to solve our problems. Even if it takes a couple of months, I'll at least welcome the feeling of working toward something. We're really only looking for a single lucky break, anyway. I'm almost certain one of them is at Hogwarts, and Nagini is the last one. Hopefully, we won't have to go through all of this multiple times."

"There might be quite a few people to question, though," Ginny said. "Should we split into two groups again?"

"Probably," Harry acknowledged. "We can rotate the groups a bit for the variation. I mean, Ron and Hermione are going to be together regardless, and Daphne and Hermione can't be in the same group because they're the two people carrying extended bags with supplies in them, but Ginny and I can swap freely." He grinned. "It'll just be a couple of months of dating, with occasionally Ginny or me third-wheeling with Ron and Hermione."

"Or Hermione third-wheeling with you and Ginny, and Ron and I off with the two of us," Daphne said, also grinning.

Harry shrugged. "Yeah, that's possible as well."

"Well, at least it sounds like we'll be keeping things fun," Ron said with a shake of his head.

"We might as well. But don't worry, I'm sure you'll get another chance to save us all from some horrible monstrosities with Gryffindor's sword and impress Hermione," Ginny said with a smirk.

"Hopefully, during this part of the mission, we won't be in any more danger than anyone else," Harry said. He sighed deeply. "Though we'll probably need to get used to the taste of Polyjuice Potion. Our real faces would draw far too much attention. Anyway, we all agree this will be the plan, then? Looking for people who attended Hogwarts with Riddle and finding out what they know?"

One by one, everyone nodded.

"Alright, then," Harry said. "I'll get in touch with Sirius. Hopefully, he'll be able to get us some names…"

So most of the morning and afternoon, I've spent in the doctor's waiting room to get my eye checked out after it got gouged out during krav practice yesterday. Fortunately, it's fine and the retina wasn't damaged, but that did mean I had about four hours less writing time than I anticipated, and my evening was filled with the krav club Christmas party. As such, another very short chapter. Sorry about that; sometimes real life just gets in the way by trying to put an eye out. Tomorrow, the plot will be back on, though.