This chapter has not been proof-read. I will update the chapter with a proof-read version if and when I receive it back.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Ron did, in fact, interrogate them the minute he noticed them entering the common room. The room itself was still rather destroyed, though the carpeting had been cleaned up and removed from anything it had impaled during the locket's attack. Ron was sitting precariously on the torn sofa with the rest of the Weasley's and Sirius in various places around them.

Harry stuck to the story that they had told the professors, for the most part. He did share with them his 'suspicions' about the origin of the necklace and the way that the necklace arrived. Sirius, as Harry predicted, was not pleased by the real answer to that mystery.

"Kreacher brought that thing here?!" Sirius shouted. "What in Merlin's name was it even doing in my parent's house, of all places?!"

"If the locket's anything like the diary was, then your brother was probably told to hide it." Harry nodded towards the pale Ginny. "Ginny got the diary from Mr. Malfoy, who was probably got it from Voldemort to protect."

Sirius frowned, his face still rather uneasy about the whole thing, He didn't even bother to defend his younger brother, already aware that the younger man had been a Death Eater. The gathered Weasley's gave him sympathetic looks. "That still doesn't explain why he brought it here, of all places." The man grumbled.

Harry rolled his eyes. "He probably heard about the incident with the diary from Dobby and figured I'd be able to get rid of it." He gave Sirius a meaningful look. His godfather grimaced, seemingly understanding that there was more to the story than they could currently discuss. Hermione might know what he was now but he definitely did not want to tell her about Horcruxes.

He'd rather avoid shoving any other life-changing revelations on her for the time being. He had no doubt that once she was able to sleep on everything that she'd learned today, the poor girl would likely have a proper freakout. She was just taking everything far too well for that not to be the case, Occlumency or not.

"That's enough speculation for today," Remus interrupted, having remained quiet for the discussion so far. "It's getting late. No doubt Harry and Hermione are exhausted. Sirius and I will stay in Gryffindor tower for the night to make sure that nothing else happens. So off to bed."

There were some grumbles as those gathered began standing and making their way towards the dorm room. "Harry!" Sirius called as he started approaching the stairs. "Stay back a minute."

Ron shot Harry a questioning look but the raven-haired boy gave him an exasperated look, heavily implying that Sirius was being a worrywart. Ron's face morphed into amused understanding, having given Harry the same look whenever Molly had started fretting over her children for what appeared to be no reason. "See you in a bit, mate." The red-head disappeared up the stairs a moment later.

Harry waited a minute to make sure that they were really gone before turning back to Sirius and Remus. He flicked his wand and cast a privacy ward around them. After everything that happened over the course of the day, he didn't want to take any chances that anyone would overhear them. "What did you need?"

"How bad off are you really?" Sirius asked without hesitating. "That wasn't any form of Protego, pup. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that spell predated Protego by a very long time."

Harry nodded, not bothering to deny it. "Close enough. I wasn't sure I could pull it off as I was an adult in the life I learned it in. It's more effective then Protego but it can't be done with a wand, so it's been lost for a very long time."

Sirius winced. "Best not let that fact slip to the rest of the staff, pup. A lost spell like that can't be explained away," his godfather sighed. "I'm starting to really wonder about the safety of this castle. A Horcrux like that shouldn't have been able to make it past the wards, no matter who brought it in. If anything, the wards should have repelled both Kreacher and the locket as soon as they got within 100 feet of Hogsmeade, let alone the castle. Something fishy is going on here and I don't like it one bit."

"It doesn't seem all that out of place to me," Harry shrugged. "This isn't the first Horcrux to find itself within Hogwarts. Voldemort himself was able to spend a year possessing a professor and no one was the wiser."

Sirius grimaced and even Remus looked uncomfortable. "That's the thing, cub." Remus rubbed a hand across his face, seemingly aging a few years. "That shouldn't be possible. None of that. The wards that protect Hogsmeade and Hogwarts are supposed to be able to repel even Dementors, yet hundreds of them were able to attack a Quidditch game. Two horcrux were able to easily enter the castle. Something is weakening the wards and I would be that it's been going on for a very long time for things to get this bad."

'When they put it like that, it does seem like something rotten is going on.' Gabriel added. 'I don't remember things like that happening in our past lives, not like it has been now. The forest has always been the exception to these rules yet they seem to be the only ones that haven't been put in danger. I would bet the only reason they've been safe is that no one sane goes in there without some sort of protection. Even Voldemort only stayed in there long enough to attack a single unicorn and he was easily run off by Firenze.'

Harry frowned, not liking where this was going. 'Something's been sapping the power of the wards, feeding off the power and using it for something. It's been going on long enough that the deterioration of the wards has gone unnoticed. This has got to have been going on for at least a century and it's been sped up in the last few years.'

"Pup, I don't like the look on your face," Sirius interrupted. Harry startled and gave the man a small shake of his head. Whatever this was, he wasn't sure that it had anything to do with Voldemort. Fifty years wasn't long enough for the type of damage that was being dealt to the wards. Right now, Voldemort was the priority threat, he needed to be addressed before they started looking for other problems to solve. Especially problems that spanned for centuries instead of decades.

'One thing about this Earth is that we're never going to be wanting for a problem to fix. Seriously, the longer we look around this world, the more things start going wrong. I'm starting to wonder if we're just a magnet for trouble at this point.' Gabriel added and Harry got the sense that there was something else, a much darker thought under the complaint that he wasn't used to hearing for his other self. Just as he noticed it, the feeling disappeared and Gabriel's normal buzz was the only thing that he could detect in his mind.

"Don't worry about it," Harry pushed everything else to the back of his mind, focusing on his godfather and Remus. "I don't think that this has anything to do with Voldemort."

Remus frowned, commenting before Sirius could though he could see that his godfather definitely wanted to. "Voldemort is the biggest threat and we do need to focus on finding and destroying his Horcruxes," there was clearly a 'but' coming, Harry could already spot it coming on. "At the same time, Harry, this isn't something that we can brush off. The wards being affected is making the entire school vulnerable to outside attack from anything. Who knows what could have been prevented if this wasn't going on."

"Why don't you and Sirius do a little digging and see if you can't find what's going on," Harry suggested after a moment. "I'll focus on the Horcruxes while you work on that." It was the best solution that they were going to find. He felt the telltale sign of a headache building up as he considered all the things that seemed to keep piling up. He really didn't want to consider what his life would have been like if he had been doing this all alone.

'We probably would have died during the Dementor fiasco.' Gabriel added in unhelpfully. Harry fought the urge to roll his eyes and instead waited for the two adults to think his suggestion over. Sirius looked like he was all for the plan while Remus still looked hesitant, likely not really comfortable leaving him alone to deal with the soul fragments that Voldemort seemed to have scattered everywhere.

'I don't think it's really everywhere, considering the amount of them we seemed to have encountered in this castle.' Harry paused, considering that for a moment. The locket and diary had both been brought into the castle by outside sources that seemed to have made their way hear some way or another.

'What if there's been a Horcrux here all along,' Gabriel finished the thought for him.

There wasn't evidence to suggest this, and Harry wasn't sure how Voldemort would have gotten a Horcrux hear that wasn't the diary (the only one he had probably made in the castle if he considered the lack of deaths after Myrtle during Tom's time here) but Harry had a horrible feeling in his gut that he wasn't wrong. And if he was right, if there really was a Horcrux here, that would bring the insane Dark Lord's count up to four.

"Sirius, what's the next magical number after three?" Harry turned to his godfather, a sinking feeling stirring in his gut.

"Seven," Sirius answered easily, giving him a strange look. Harry grimaced, suddenly feeling very nauseous. "Pup?"

"Bellatrix has another Horcrux, like how Malfoy has the diary. I think there might be one hidden in the castle as well." Harry closed his eyes, trying to stamp down on the innate horror that was beginning to rise inside of him. Seven times. Seven times Voldemort had ripped apart his soul and stuck them in vessels that were never meant to handle such a powerful force. Souls were never supposed to be split, especially using such dark magic in order to do so.

'Ironically, from everything that Remus gathered from those books, it was his own soul that was powering the force used to fracture it. The only power great enough to split a soul available to a human is the power of a soul. I don't think anyone ever considered that possibility.' Harry suspected that 'anyone' was referring to their siblings and not humans themselves. 'Sometimes, I think free will is made up of irony more than anything else.'

"I think this is enough bad news for tonight," Remus interrupted before Sirius could regain the color in his face. "Harry's right, Voldemort is the priority. If he's made that many Horcruxes than I doubt that he's even semi-sane anymore and there's no telling what he's planning with this tournament."

Sirius nodded, seeming to pull himself together. They wrapped up the conversation as Harry stretched and prepared to head up to bed, the werewolf and his godfather heading off to their own bedrooms.

It wasn't until Harry was already in bed, attempting to sleep when what Remus said hit him. 'When did they confirm that Voldemort was behind this?'

Okay, this chapter was really short. I was hoping to get it up a few weeks ago but life happened and then college happened, so it's both shorter and later than I wanted it to be. It is insane, how much homework that I have already. I knew I was going to be busy this year but I guess I wasn't prepared for just how badly. I already have two tests, two papers, and a quiz just for tomorrow that need to be done and that doesn't include textbook readings and weekly papers on the them for two different classes. Just...ugh. I only really have time to write during my work shift and that's when I'm not working on homework or doing my work duties. If I didn't have time management skills, I'd probably be screwed.

But no worries! I have a couple free weekends coming up so I should be able to get the next chapter down a lot sooner than this one was and it should definitely be longer than this. I could have worked on this one longer, I suppose, but I wanted to get the chapter out this week. I guess this is more of an interlude than anything else, if I'm being honest but it is better than nothing.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter and feel free to ask me any question you might have and I'll do my best to answer (barring spoilers).

~MisteryMaiden~