Launching Ships, Chapter 10

Neither Fred nor George had ever heard of such a thing as an artifact that would keep you from dying. Oh, to be sure, there were plenty of artifacts (and rituals, and potions) that could increase your longevity, wellness, and general wellbeing, and there were various things designed to help you resist sickness, accidents or attacks, but nothing either of them had heard of could literally tie your soul to earth so that you could get a new body, so it was obviously very dark, dark with a capitol "D". This theory was borne out by the fact that Snape wouldn't even tell them what it was, only assuring them that Dumbledore had it covered.

Fred, personally, did not trust the headmaster to take care of it, and George concurred. He was a great teacher and a great man, but both of the twins had seen little Harry in the hospital wing just one too many times because of the old man's negligence, and it was also not right that he had only told a few people. What if- Merlin forbid, but they were in a war- all of the people he entrusted the secret to died? What then? Would Voldemort just live forever?

They both wanted answers, but it was doubtful that they could get them from Snape, so they did the next best thing: gave him some songfruit to experiment with to distract him (and for the pass to the Restricted Section) and they crept in, gave Madame Pince the pass, and began to search for a reference to anything that could make a wizard quasi-immortal.

Nothing. The only things they could find were about the philosopher's stone and the theory that a phoenix animagus could come back if he or she died in his form, and of course horrid voodoo and animantic rituals for raising the dead, like how you would make an inferius. They were actually beginning to get quite desperate when George found a single line in a dusty, fragile old book about soul magic, which seemed to have been forgotten due to the fact that it had been shoved behind the books lining a shelf full of love magic rituals.

"That darckest of all Magiks, the Horcruxe, abel to bring the Ded bak to quiknes by vertu of a Sacrifise of Parte of one's own imortal Sole and a Rituel of dethe and seed."

"Oh, lovely," Fred commented, looking at George and then back at the ancient pages his twin was pointing to, which shimmered faintly with protection charms. "That looks charming. Does that book by any chance say what you need to kill someone who's made horcruxes?"

George read further. "Uh, no, at least not from what I can tell. It goes straight on to talking about soul magic slavery rituals."

Fred choked a little (those rituals were quite as appalling as they sounded) but went on reading over George's shoulder.

The book did not, unfortunately, contain anything more about horcruxes, and neither did any of the other books that they looked through in the next few weeks; Fred speculated that someone, possibly even Dumbledore, had removed said books for fear that other megalomaniacs would get a hold of them and decide to make horcruxes. They were frankly at their wits' end. Where else could they get materials about horcruxes? There were no other library books that even mentioned them except Secrets of the Darkest Art, which did not go into detail, and they couldn't just stroll into Scrivenshafts and ask for books on how to split your soul and stick it in things, or (Merlin forbid) owl order one of the Knockturn Alley shops. That left asking someone.

"But we can't ask anyone!" Fred said when George brought that up. "Remember the vow that Snape made us take?"

"Yeah, I remember. But we could write to someone. Or pensive the memory."

"You're a genius!"

"I try," George said, grinning. But then yet another problem raised its nasty little head.

Asking the teachers or Dumbledore would be suspect, even if the staff that they asked knew what a horcrux was, and they could definitely not expect Professor Snape to tell them after the man had dismissed any further questions before; plus, they hadn't wanted the man to know even that they were looking into it. Their parents, especially Molly, would refuse to tell them due to how dark the magic was, Sirius Black would likely be unable to keep his mouth shut, they didn't know or trust most of the aurors all that well...

"Tonks?" Fred suggested.

"No, not her. I mean, I do trust her, but I'm not sure that she'd be willing to keep it a secret from his boss, and Moody'd be onto us like white on rice."

Fred snickered at the expression, but sobered quickly. "Same goes for Kingsley, too, I guess. Moody might actually be great, except that he'd probably pump us full of veritaserum to figure out how we know about horcruxes, and then we'd be in super big trouble."

"Yeah, no. We're not talking to Moody. Lupin?"

"Lupin would take us straight to Dumbledore, and then we'd be in trouble and so would Professor Snape."

George nodded slowly. "Yeah. It's a pity, really."

The two of them looked at the ancient tome for another few minutes, lost, and then suddenly Fred facepalmed. "Gred, we're idiots!"

"What do you mean?"

"You know who we know who has good occlumensy shields, can keep a secret, and is in a position to know about horcruxes and how to destroy them?"

"Who?" asked George, at a loss.

"Bill, of course."

"Bill?"

"Yeah, Bill. Our brother, you know? The cursebreaker and all that?"

"I know who Bill is, you just surprised me, that's all," George shot back, annoyed. "So you think he could help?"

Fred nodded. "He could at least try to help us."

And so it was that the Weasley twins drafted one of the hardest letters that they had ever written, and layered it with so many security spells and wards that Errol wavered from side to side as the old owl tried to mount into the air with it.

Bill Weasley was having a rather ordinary morning, or at least as ordinary as a top-of-the-line cursebreaker with a veela for a girlfriend could have. There were some routine checks he would have to do, as always, but otherwise his day was his own, and he was planning to have a nice lie-in, then maybe do the little bit of work he had, read and research things for a rather sticky case that he had encountered earlier that week, have lunch, and then maybe have a nice quiet date with Fleur.

Only the lie-in part actually happened. Bill got up lazily and went downstairs to have breakfast and read the paper. As he was buttering his scones, however, Errol, the old Weasley family owl, landed straight on the plate. Bill sighed, then pulled the letter off the old creature and let it sit there on the table, panting. Then he opened the letter. Or, at least, he tried to. A ward was shimmering overtop the envelope, so faint that he didn't see it until it zapped his fingers. He frowned. Why would a family letter be warded? A diagnostic charm had his eyes going even wider. And who, in Merlin's name, knew how to cast a bloodward, was okay with doing so, and thought it had been necessary? He almost didn't open it, but it could be important, and he was actually rather curious, so at last he checked it to make sure it was not one of those dark bloodwards that would kill whoever tried to get past it, and then he used his wand to carefully cut his finger and let a single drop of blood fall onto the parchment. A red glow crept all over the paper from the point where the drop of blood had landed until the entire thing glowed ruby red, and then there was a flash of white light as the blood was proved to be the right person's, and given willingly, and then the wards were dispelled. Bill stared at the envelope for just one more minute, and then he carefully opened it.

There was a letter inside, and the handwriting was Fred and Georges'. Bill's eyes narrowed. If this was a prank...

It didn't seem to be, though. In fact, it looked, if anything, as if the boys were trying for the utmost secrecy, because there were about ten more specialized spells on the letter inside, including one that he had only ever taught the twins and his employers at Gringotts; it actually looked to be serious. But at last he had gotten through all the wards, and this was what he read:

Dear Bill,

As you have no doubt guessed, this is not at all a prank. As a matter of fact, the paper has been soaked with virtute scribatorum, so you know that we aren't lying. Bill's eyes widened. The potion, while not being very hard to make, was rather rare, and few used it, since they had vows and veritaserum, so they no longer needed evidence by writing. But dear Merlin, this must be important! His unease grew.

So we can't tell you everything, but we swore a vow not to talk about it, so we couldn't exactly just floo you and ask. Plus, the floo network isn't that secure, and we do not want anything getting to the wrong ears. Bill was getting very worried now. Anyway, apparently Voldie has made horcruxes. As in, multiple. Will stopped breathing for a solid minute. What?! We don't know what they all are, but we do know that there's more than one, and Gred here thinks that the thing that possessed Ginny was one of them. Anyway, we need to know how to destroy them, like, post-haste, because Professor Snape says that Dumbledore is working on it but we don't think he is, so we're going to work on it after we pass our NEWTS. But we won't be able to do so without help.

Also, did you know that there is a prophecy that says Harry has to kill Voldie or die? We're really worried, but we're hoping that we can fulfill the prophecy by, like, holding Voldie down so that Harry can kill him, cause then maybe he wouldn't die. Do you know anything about how prophecies are supposed to work?

Great. This was a nice surprise to wake up to. William Weasley dearly hoped that they had misheard or misinterpreted whatever they had read, but somehow, especially seeing the spells on the parchment, he doubted it. And so he sent off a "family emergency" missive to Gringotts, canceled the reservation at The Bronze Hippogriff (which he had been planning to surprise Fleur with) and bought a portkey back to Britain at once. He needed to get to the bottom of this, and as soon as possible.

It seemed that the twins were, actually, telling the truth, and Bill was both furious and afraid. How could Dumbledore have kept this from everyone, even his precious Order? Yes, it was dark, dark magic; dark with a capital "D", as a matter of fact, and Will would be the first to admit that all and sundry shouldn't be told; it would just stir up fear in the rank and file, and it would alert He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that someone had figured out his secrets. But why couldn't he have told a few people he could trust, (perhaps making them swear an Oath to keep it to themselves, so they couldn't go spilling it to any random person or, worse, to the Death Munchers). But to tell no one at all- that was asking for trouble. Dumbledore wasn't as young as he had been once, after all, and if he took the secret to his grave, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named might actually live forever, brought back whenever some heroic person tried to kill him. Not to mention that, while Dumbledore was certainly a powerful wizard, he was still fallible, and probably needed some help. And so it was that Bill Weasley decided to hunt down the horcruxes himself, with the help of a team of his cursebreaker colleagues and the left-over diary, which he had wheedled from Dumbledore stating some sort of lost Gringotts regulation.

Using the diary, he and his team made a horcrux-tracking device, finding them all in relatively short order, the ring, the locket (and a mad house elf, who tried to take away the locket screaming about "Good Master Regulus"), the diadem (Bill had been furious that such a beautiful and priceless artifact had been turned into a horcrux, but at least the cursebreaking ritual did not destroy it), the goblet (and Merlin, were the goblins ever furious; keeping a horcrux in Gringotts was against several treaties and goblin law) Voldemort's pet snake (Merlin, that monster was sick) and Harry Potter himself. That last required a bunch of complicated runic changes to the ritual to remove the horcrux, but after a few weeks of working around the clock they figured out how to do the ritual in a reasonably safe manner, although Bill was scared to death the entire time and had to go have a firewhiskey and an entire bottle of calming drought afterward. Bill shuddered to think of what might have happened if he had not been there; Dumbledore would probably have just injected the boy's scar with basilisk venom or contracted to have him Kissed by a dementor, for the Greater Good. That wasn't to say that Harry was not affected, but it was probably better that he be a little sick than that he be dead. The best part about it was, Dumbledore didn't even suspect! The phrase: "Gringotts' Business" could mean a lot of different things, after all...

So then it was that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (Voldemort, Bill reminded himself) was mortal, or at least as mortal as it was possible to make him (they had no way of knowing if he had undergone invincibility rituals or drank a gallon of felix felicis while they were off hunting bits of his soul, of course). Now all they had to do was figure out a plan for killing him.

The twins, however, apparently already had a plan. They wouldn't tell Bill what it was, so he had no way of knowing if it would actually work, but he was inclined to think that it would at least have some promise, simply because he had, himself, gotten hit with enough well-prepared pranks that they had made.

Meanwhile, said twins were finalizing their plans. They knew perfectly well that Voldemort would soon figure out that there was a traitor in their Inner Circle, and they knew that it would not look good for Professor Snape when that happened. Fortunately, however, they had a plan that would both save Snape, (unless Voldemort decided to cast a killing curse, of course, but they doubted that a traitor would be given a quick death) and, hopefully, see the end of the monster that had terrified the Wizarding World for so long.

It involved some specialized WWW tricks, a special magical button (to be sewed on Professor Snape's robes) and Harry James Potter. They convinced Snape to have said button sewn on by telling him that it was a one-time shield against most curses and (giving a devilish wink) insurance, just in case Voldemort attacked him, and, while it was pretty clear that the man was humoring them, he at least let them sew it on his Death Eater robes, where it sat there like just another button. Not that it wasn't a button, but it was so, so much more. The password was "Chaos."