I have not made much progress on my new Splinters of the Mind's eye e-book, due to college classes starting. Said classes are also my least embarrassing excuse for leaving you, my readers, hanging. Time has a way of slipping away.
A month had passed and with it, half the summer holidays. Harry had focused further on the source of these visions of Voldemort, and had made a lot of progress in knowing his enemy.
Turns out, it the Force hadn't pulled the information about his backstory from the external environment, but from a fragment of Voldemort's force-presence embedded in his head. This was a rather disquieting concept for more than the initial gut reaction of disgust. There were also other shorn off pieces of Riddle that anchored his consciousness to the basic three-dimensional world we inhabit, with a possibility of rebuilding a body sometime in the future, assuming it hadn't happened already. In short, Harry's intel about Voldemort came from one of the things whose existence was keeping Voldemort alive. And he didn't know how to survive getting rid of it.
For now, however, he had a list of five more of these vile horcruxes that could be eliminated with considerably less sacrifice on his part.
The diary was wherever Malfoy had hidden it, probably in his fortress of a manor.
The ring was in Little Hangleton, near Nottingham and well out of Harry's still too limited teleportation range
The diadem was in Hogwarts, and if going halfway up England was too far, going up to the Scottish castle was out of the question.
The locket was too well protected to reach, especially without the means to cure the nightmare draught. Harry could theoretically compel Dudley to drink it, but that action sounded a little too sith-like for his taste
Hufflepuff's cup was in Gringott's bank in London.
Hmm...London was within his teleportation range, and the Goblins, treaty-bound to remain neutral in Wizarding conflicts, would not take kindly to their security being used to bolster a terrorist's apparent immortality.
Having picked a course of action, harry compelled his aunt to weed her own damn garden and leave him out of it. He dressed in his least raggedy clothes, and with an almost silent pop, began the simplest leg of his quest.
Harry teleported to a restroom stall in the nearest park to Charing Cross Road, and stopped at a clothing store to get a ball cap. It's amazing how much coinage you can get when you're able to summon it out of storm drains.
armed with a basic disguise, or at least a cover for his scar, he set off to the Leaky Cauldron using the directions Dumbledore had given Tom. An hour later (London looked nothing like it did in the 1930's) he finally found the shabby pub and went inside.
As much as the rest of the city had changed, one couldn't tell from the inside of the Cauldron, which looked about the same as ever, except slightly more shabby, and the barkeep was considerably older. Harry asked Tom (the barkeep, not his own unwelcome passenger) to help him open the gate to Diagon Alley, and Tom directed the maid to assist him.
Diagon Alley had the same atmosphere as before, but there was a new quidditch shop, among other places. His destination wasn't any of these places, though, for the marble bank was beckoning.
After waiting in the shortest line, and enlightening the teller as to his lack of a vault key, he was directed to the security offices. Apparently Harry Potter was not the first one to come in using that name, and without a key to boot.
Harry was presented with a small rune-lined bowl and a knife. He was told to jab his finger and drip some blood in the bowl, causing it to glow a pleasant shade of green not unlike what he pictured Luke's second blade to be.
With the blood test completed, he was directed to the office of his families financial advisor, and they got down to business.
Said business would soon alter the course of British history.