Chapter 5: The Snake's Immortal Too

"Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons

Mrs. Weasley was in hysterics when the Order gathered together on Halloween. Various Order members had tried to send letters to Harry, Ron, and Hermione at the Lion's Den over the past few days, but each owl came back with the letters still attached to their legs, having not found the intended recipients. The most recent owl did bring something additional: A sign that was partially burned, with a large crack down its center. The aurors in the group recognized it as the sign that hung over a small pub in the village outside Azkaban.

"The tower and the village were destroyed!" Mrs. Weasley sobbed, "All the Death Eaters broken out! All the guards dead! It was in the Prophet! They must've found them!"

"Just because they found them doesn't mean they caught them," Remus tried to sound calm, but had little success. "All the dead left there were identified—"

"WHAT IF THEY WEREN'T LEFT THERE?!" Mrs. Weasley screamed, "WHAT IF THEY TOOK THEM BACK TO HIM?!"

"We'd know it," McGonagall said firmly, shaking her head. "If Voldemort killed them, he'd want us to know. He would make sure everyone knew." Mrs. Weasley stared at her through the geysers of water that were her eyes and nodded slightly before burying her tear-stained face in her hands. McGonagall stared from Mrs. Weasley to Remus, to an also crying Ginny Weasley and several other downcast faces while attempting to reassure herself that her own words were true. She tried desperately to convince herself that her three prized students had somehow survived.

"You saw them," Voldemort seethed. "You all saw them, but I don't see them now! Crucio!" He aimed his wand at a random, masked Death Eater, and they collapsed to the ground in pain. The curse was lifted and the Death Eater forced himself back up as though nothing had happened, murmuring his apologies along with the rest of the group. Voldemort sat down in a large armchair at the head of the otherwise empty room. "What happened?" He whispered icily.

Dolohov removed his mask and stepped forward. A trace of the cut Hermione gave him across his nose was still visible. Voldemort raised a thin eyebrow. "Potter, Granger, and Weasley, came running into the cellblock our cellblock. The Mudblood, Granger, took a swing at me through the bars and she asked where Canis Black's old cell was. Weasley said something about her having used a Killing Curse before, and when I didn't answer Granger, she gave me this." Dolohov pointed to the cut on his nose and shifted his cloak around to reveal part of the long cut across his chest.

"Then she asked me," Rodolphus continued, also coming forward and removing his mask. "They figured it out without my saying, though. They found a glove that had been transfigured into a pillow inside the cell. They said they needed it…" Rodolphus shuddered slightly as he finished, "to kill you, my Lord." Rodolphus and Dolohov stumbled backwards when Voldemort stood abruptly, white-hot fire in his red eyes.

"Did the glove have Ravenclaw's crest on it?" He demanded.

"Yes, my Lord," Lucius Malfoy spoke up.

"What else did they say?" Voldemort demanded, his eyes boring into Malfoy's. Using Legilimency, he found his answer in Lucius Malfoy's off-guard mind. He scanned Malfoy's memory from the moment the trio took the glove to the moment the Death Eaters burst out of the wooden door at the end of the tunnel and found the three Gryffindors were nowhere in sight.

"You couldn't find them anywhere in the village?" Voldemort inquired somewhat distractedly.

"No, my Lord," Bellatrix answered. "We turned the village upside-down and found no trace of them except—"

"Except?!" Voldemort rounded on her. "Except what?!"

"In one of the old houses by the cliff," Bellatrix said shakily. "We're not even sure the jewels belong to them, but…" Bellatrix drew from her pocket the jewels that once, unknown to her, adorned Hufflepuff's goblet. "We found them in the sink of the most livable house, sitting in a pool of some kind of potion."

Voldemort strode forward and seized the jewels from Bellatrix. He rolled them around in his long-fingered hands until he saw what he was looking for: Hufflepuff's crest, stained onto the face of one of the jewels. The Death Eaters had moved in closer to see the jewels and they all stared from the Hufflepuff crest to their master, holding their breath. They scattered when Voldemort suddenly whipped around, scanning the room with his eyes. "Where's Nagini?" He spoke in a tone that bordered on panicked. The Death Eaters stirred.

"When we went to Azkaban, my Lord, you ordered Snape to take her to the underground hideout outside Knockturn Alley, in case we had to abandon this one." Draco spoke, his voice cracking slightly.

"Where is Snape now?"

"Here, my Lord," Snape said from behind Draco. Voldemort visibly tensed and several Death Eaters flinched, expecting pain. They had never seen him so unglued, not even around Dumbledore.

"Snape, Bellatrix, Lucius, Draco, you come with me to retrieve Nagini!" Voldemort ordered. "The rest of you stay here and kill anything that moves that isn't marked!" Voldemort led the small squad he'd chosen out the back door and they Disapparated to the underground hideout.

Once there, Voldemort sped inside without a word. Snape, Bellatrix, and the two Malfoys followed while exchanging uneasy glances. When they were all inside, they saw Voldemort kneeling beside Nagini. The snake appeared to have been stabbed between the eyes, but she was somehow alive. Voldemort, still silent, traced his wand across the gash, sealing the wound. "They didn't destroy all the others yet…" He finally whispered, more to himself than the four standing around him. "Nagini wouldn't have survived… There's at least one left…"

"One left of what, my Lord?" Snape inquired cautiously. Voldemort turned to face them.

"That was way too close," Ron breathed. He, Hermione, and Harry were crouched amongst the roots of an enormous tree, right outside the Death Eaters' underground hideout. They'd just made it out of one door into the hideout when Voldemort had come sweeping in through the other. Hiding amongst the roots, unable to move, they were just barely able to hear Voldemort's conversation with Snape, Bellatrix, and the Malfoys.

Voldemort confessed to them the story of the Horcruxes he'd made so many years ago. When he heard about the glove and the jewels, he concluded Dumbledore must have known and instructed his three students to destroy the remaining Horcruxes. What he said next shocked the three Gryffindors: Nagini couldn't be killed unless all the other Horcruxes were destroyed first. Moments after they heard him say that, he reemerged from the hideout, carrying Nagini, and he and the Death Eaters Disapparated.

"But we diddestroy all the other Horcruxes," Hermione said as she, Harry, and Ron climbed out of the tree roots. "We burned the glove last night. That was the last one before Nagini."

"The diary, the ring, the locket, the goblet, the glove, Nagini, and Voldemort…" Harry murmured the list of Horcruxes Dumbledore had described to him. "What did we do wrong?" Hermione and Ron shook their heads.

"Let's get back to our room, in case they come back," Ron said. Harry nodded.

The night they had escaped the attack around Azkaban, Harry, Ron, and Hermione had covered themselves in long, hooded cloaks, and checked into a small inn at the outer end of Knockturn Alley, under the names Neal, Landen, and Claire. The morning after they arrived, they had been looking for owls when Harry heard Nagini calling for her 'master' and his 'masked pets'.

The three Gryffindors kept their heads down as they reentered the alley. As dodgy as Knockturn Alley always was, it was at its worst that day, on Halloween, when some of the locals would deliberately release untreated werewolves into the raging party in the streets, among other dangerous magical creatures.

The trio pulled the hoods of their cloaks up over their heads as they entered the inn and proceeded up to their room. The room was small, with two twin beds, a small table with one chair, a cramped bathroom, and a mini fridge, all crammed so close together that there was less than an arms length of space between any two pieces of furniture. The only food they had left was some bread, mixed nuts, and a half-gallon of milk Ron had stolen from a store in neighboring Diagon Alley, under Harry's invisibility cloak. They knew they would have to find a way to get more food soon, and water. That was becoming increasingly hard to do as everyone in the magical world had read the interview with the Bludger Brothers and knew they were on the run. They shared some of the milk and mixed nuts as they tried to think of where their plan had failed.

"The only possible answer is that one of the Horcruxes wasn't properly destroyed," Hermione said.

"But which one?" Ron asked.

"I saw the part of Voldemort's soul that was in the diary die," Harry said. "And the ring took most of Dumbledore's hand with it."

"The glove burned completely," Ron said. "And Voldemort said the goblet was destroyed, even though he had the jewels off it."

"That only leaves the locket," Hermione finished the train of thought. "But R.A.B. destroyed it." Harry stared at her.

"No," he said, getting up off one of the beds and taking R.A.B.'s note from his bottomless bag. "They said they would destroy it. We don't know what actually happened. I mean, if they got the locket by themselves, they would've drunk that potion that nearly killed Dumbledore. What if they died before they finished the job?"

"Then where would the locket be?" Hermione asked.

"Probably wherever they were last seen," Harry answered. "Not knowing who they are, we'll be hard pressed to find the last person who saw them."

"Well, we have to try," Hermione said. "We don't exactly have a choice in the matter. Especially now that Voldemort knows what we're doing. If he finds the real locket before we do, we'll never be able to destroy it."