Harry gasped desperately. His chest felt as if it had been trampled by a hippogriff. It took him a couple seconds to remember where he was, but then he recognized his room at Grimmauld Place, and the concerned faces of Hermione and Ron hovering over him. Terence, Dumbledore, and Luneta, who Terence had introduced them to, crowded around the edge of a painting on the wall.

Snape started packing up his potions tools while Hermione and Ron dashed to Harry.

"You alright, mate?" Ron asked loudly, still keeping an eye on Snape. Despite the fact that they had all agreed to this, none of them felt entirely comfortable with it.

Harry nodded. "I'm fine," he said raspily. He cleared his throat.

"How does your head feel?" Hermione raised a tentative hand to his forehead, pulling it back quickly with a concerned look at Harry.

Harry made a face. "Well, my headache's gone."

"You didn't say you had a headache."

He shrugged. "I didn't realize I had a headache. And my head feels, I don't know, lighter now. Like there's less clutter."

Snape closed his bag with a snap. He grabbed Harry's chin, staring in his eyes. Harry recognized the familiar onslaught of legilimency and tried to pull away, but Snape's grasp held him firm.

"Hey!" Ron protested. Snape released Harry and nodded.

"There's no sign of any connection to the Dark Lord."

"It worked, then?" Terence asked from his portrait.

Snape nodded. "It seems to have."

"So we can go after the other horcruxes now," Hermione said.

"No," was the only thing Snape said.

"Excuse me?" Harry said."

"We," he gestured at himself and Terence, "will find the other horcruxes. He knows a spell to locate them. You lot," he gave them a disdainful glare, "will stay here and not get involved."

After the argument had descended into a shouting match that was only broken by Hermione silencing both Harry and Snape, it was decided, much to everyone's dissatisfaction, that the kids would help with the planning and Snape would be the one to do the actual finding and destroying with the Sword of Gryffindor, which, according to Snape, had been imbued with basilisk venom and had been used by Dumbledore to destroy the ring.

Terence and Dumbledore were the only ones who seemed satisfied with the plan, and Snape left with a dramatic glare and twirl of his cloak.

. . . . .

"Blimey," Ron said. "Gringotts? How are we supposed to break into Gringotts?"

They had done the locating spell (or rather, Snape had done it alone and then brought the results back to show the others). Ron, Hermione, and Harry had been sitting at the table at Grimmauld place when he apparated onto the front doorstep, came into the kitchen, and, without a word, dropped a piece of parchment onto the table.

On the paper, written out in a flourishing script was,

"Lestrange vault, Gringotts Bank.

The Room of Hidden Things, The Room of Requirement, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The Master Library, Malfoy Manor"

They all stared at the paper. "Well, at least we know how to get into Hogwarts," Ron said. "So that one should be easy."

"Terence has a plan for the first one," Snape said, tapping the top line with a slender finger. "A foolish one that will never work." He didn't say anything else.

"Um," Hermione said. She glanced over at Ron and Harry for help, but they just shrugged. "What's his plan?" she finally asked Snape.

He scowled at her. "He wants to talk to the goblins."

She frowned. "He wants to talk to them?"

"Yes." The word seemed forced out. "He wants to explain things to them. Explain that there's a horcrux that needs to be destroyed and ask them nicely to give it to us."

Ron snorted. "I know enough from History of Magic that that would never work."

Hermione glared at him. "How would you know, Ron, you never paid attention in History of Magic."

"Well, no, but I heard enough to know about all the wars that started because the goblins misunderstood something."

"What does Dumbledore think?" Harry asked suddenly.

"He's all for it," Snape said glumly. "Of course he is. Stupid fool." He mumbled something unintelligible.

"Well, Terence has been right before. What would it hurt to try it?"

Snape answered with his usual optimism. "It could be a trap. Terence could be a spy. We could all be captured, tortured and killed. Millions of people could be killed."

But despite Snape's objections, he soon found himself standing in front of Gringotts with Terence's painting in a bag, trying to talk to the goblins. After some threats from both sides, they let him into a private room and he pulled the portrait out. After that, the goblins were eager to please. Terence seemed a bit awkward with all of the sycophantic adulation. It left Snape wondering who exactly he had been when he was alive.

All in all, it only took three hours before the negotiations were finished and the horcrux was located and destroyed.

Terence was a bit too smug about being right.

That evening, they sat in the kitchen again, discussing the other horcruxes. "I am almost confident that the one in Malfoy Manor is his snake, Nagini," Snape said.

"A living creature?" Terence raised his eyebrow. "That's very unstable."

Snape answered grimly. "So's the Dark Lord. The snake used to be just his pet, and then sometime last year he stopped letting it out of his sight. That was also when he...changed. His physical features became more serpentine, and the snake began to seem to understand us when we spoke."

"It could be," Terence said doubtfully.

"And," Snape added triumphantly, "he has ordered Bellatrix to defend it with her life."

"That definitely seems likely, then," Hermione said. "Is there any way for you to get to it despite Bellatrix? Maybe poison in its food?"

Snape sneered at her question. "Not without being killed."

"What about the one at Hogwarts? That one should be easier. We can decided what to do with Nagini when it comes to it," Harry suggested.

Snape sneered at him. "Easy? Have you ever tried finding a room that you've never been to? And I've never even heard of the Room of Requirement. It's going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

A grin slowly spread across Harry's face.

"You mean you've never heard of the Room of Requirement?" he said facetiously. "I thought that everyone knew about it.

Snape glared at him. "Am I to assume, Potter, based on your flippant attitude, that you know of its location?"

Harry's smirk got even bigger. "Of course."

"Well? Where is it?"

"It's called the Room of Requirement, or sometimes the Come and Go Room. It's on the seventh floor. You have to walk past the wall three times and think about what you need, and the room will provide it for you."

"So we just go up to this wall and ask it politely if it happens to have one of the Dark Lord's horcruxes?"

"I'm not sure," Hermione frowned. "But I don't think so. It says here, "The Room of Hidden Things.'"

Hermione glanced at Harry. "I think that's where you hid the, you know-"

"No, Miss Granger, I don't know," Snape said dryly. "What did Potter hide there? Do I even want to know?"

"Is that true, Harry?" Terence asked.

"I-" Harry glanced at his two friends. "Yeah, I put something there, if it's what I think it is. But there was lots of junk there. It would take months to go through it all."

Snape threw his hands in the air. "Oh, wonderful! Maybe the Dark Lord will go on vacation and give us some extra time."

"Severus," Terence said, stifling Snape's outburst. "How good are you at sensing dark magic?"

Severus glared at him with affront. "You already know. We've already discussed this."

Terence nodded. "Then try and keep the drama to a minimum. You already know how we are going to find it, and you already know that it shouldn't take too long."

"Shouldn't. There's always a possibility of error."

"In which case it would be your error and you would be fully capable of taking responsibility for it yourself."

Snape rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything. Terence took it as acquiescence.

"Then Severus will come back to the castle tonight to find it."

. . . . .

Harry watched Snape walk out the front door of Grimmauld Place. As soon as the door had shut behind him, Hermione said, "Ok, Harry, what is it?"

"I don't like this," he said.

Hermione tried to reign in her impatience. "What don't you like?"

He slumped in his chair, avoiding her eyes. "We're not doing anything. Snape's the one who keeps destroying the horcruxes. Dumbledore gave me this job. It's got to be me."

"Well," Hermione tried, "Dumbledore did ask Snape to help us."

"Yeah, help. He asked Snape to help us, not to do everything himself."

Ron shrugged. "I don't really like it either, mate, but you gotta admit, he's done a lot in the past couple of days."

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because Harry flinched away from him.

"He's doing my job!" he yelled at them before storming out of the room.

. . . . .

Harry patted his pocket, checking for the third time that he had his wand. He carefully opened the door and slipped out, letting the door click shut after him.

"What are you doing?"

Harry almost screamed. "Ron?" he hissed, glancing down the hall at the other bedrooms. "I thought you were- what are you doing?"

"I asked you first." Ron folded his arms sternly.

"I was- uhh-"

"Going to sneak into Hogwarts so you can find that horcrux yourself?"

Harry let the tension out of his shoulders. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

"'Cause I know you. Now let's get going. Hermione's been waiting a while." Ron headed to the stairs.

"What? Hermione knows too?" Harry followed Ron.

Ron shrugged. "Yeah."

"And she's going along with it?"

"She's just going along to keep you two out of trouble," Hermione called from downstairs. "There's no point in trying to be quiet, Harry. We both know what you're planning."

"I just- I just have to do this, guys," Harry said. He ran an agitated hand through his hair. "It's just that it was my job, the job that Dumbledore gave me, and I can't let other people do my job." He looked at them. "Don't you agree?"

"No," Hermione said. At the same time, Ron said, "Yes." Hermione glared at him. He shrugged. "What? I do agree with him."

"Fine," she huffed. "But let's not start all that again. We've already discussed it. There's nothing I can say to convince the two of you not to break into Hogwarts but I don't want either of you killed, so I guess I'm going to have to come along." She turned to Harry. "How were you planning on getting in?"

"Um. I just thought I'd call Dobby."

There was a loud crack, and Dobby appeared in the room. "Harry Potter has called for Dobby? What can Dobby do for Harry Potter?" Dobby was jumping with excitement.

"Hey, Dobby," Harry said. "Can you take us with you to Hogwarts?"

Dobby frowned. "Harry Potter must not go to Hogwarts. Hogwarts is bad place. Dangerous. Harry Potter could be killed." He shook his head emphatically, his ears flapping.

Harry crouched down so he could look Dobby in the eyes. "Dobby, I need to get to Hogwarts because I need to find something that will help us to defeat Voldemort. It's very important."

Dobby considered it, then nodded. "Dobby will bring you to Hogwarts."

"Can you bring us to right outside the Room of Requirement?" Hermione asked.

"Dobby can do that. Is you all going?"

Harry glanced at Ron and Hermione for confirmation, then nodded. "Yeah, we're all going."

Dobby held out his hands to them. Harry and Hermione clasped hands with him, and after a moment of dithering, Ron grabbed onto Dobby's wrist. There was a loud crack, and Harry felt the familiar pull of apparition, and then they were in the corridor outside of the Room of Requirement.

"Thanks, Dobby," Harry said. "You've helped us a lot."

Dobby beamed at him. "Dobby is always happy to help." Then he was gone.

"Barmy as ever," Ron muttered, but there was a trace of affection in his voice.