Urgh. Personally, this is the chapter I hate the most. I'm not so great at writing Dumbledore being serious and all…but it is pretty necessary fill-in-the-blanks stuff, so I had to do it.

Thanks to all my reviewers. Fist-shaking at all the readers who aren't reviewing, if any. But enjoy anyway. (This has been slightly edited to give more reasons why Slughorn squealed about his Horcrux memory.)

Chapter Seven: The Poor Boy

"Oh, Albus, is it—the rumors—are they true?" The witch asked pleadingly.

The old man's eyes weren't twinkling tonight. "Yes, my dear Professor, I'm sad to say that they are."

"That poor little boy…his parents, are they dead?"

"Yes, Minerva. He found them. Their secret-keeper must have broken down."

"Well, at least you caught up with him. He's really gone, I hope?" Minerva McGonagall asked sharply, square glasses glinting through the darkness.

"He is. His curse rebounded, and somehow he has vanished. But the poor child…he was killed as well." The man's voice turned bitter. "Voldemort's Death Eaters were eager to carry out their master' last wishes."

A sob: "And where are the Horcruxes now, Albus?"

"We've got them at the headquarters, Minerva. I hope to have them destroyed as quickly as I can," Dumbledore said as he took an odd-looking pocket watch out of the folds of his robe. "We can only thank our lucky stars that Horace Slughorn chose to tell us about them when he did…it is the only method of preventing Voldemort's return to power," he said, checking the watch.

The witch snorted. "Trust Horace to wait till the coast is clear to confess."

"He was a great admirer of the Longbottoms, but I won't deny that it took some persuasion," Dumbledore said calmly.

McGonagall's nostrils flared, but the look on Dumbledore's face somewhat quelled her irritation at Slughorn and a bit of pity replaced it. She'd seen Albus Dumbledore at his most formidable—the only wizard You-Know-Who ever feared.

"At the very least," Dumbledore continued, "we can prevent Voldemort from ever returning now…"

But McGonagall caught a trace of worry in Dumbledore's voice. "There's something else, isn't there, Albus? Something bad…"

He sighed wearily and snapped his watch shut. "We know from the memory Slughorn provided us that Tom Riddle planned on making several Horcruxes, most likely seven—" McGonagall nodded, remembering Riddle's carefully controlled features as the Order of the Phoenix had seen in the Pensieve—"Apart from his own body, we've only found five, Minerva."

"The sixth—where is it, Albus?" McGonagall sounded frantic. Her hands were squeezed in an iron death grip around a piece of her cloak.

"We don't know, Minerva. But we'll find it. I have the greatest confidence in the Order."

This triggered another sob: "Oh Albus…how can we go on without them?"

"They fought him bravely," Dumbledore said soothingly. "You know how I feel about death, Minerva. It is only the next—"

"—Great adventure, I know." The woman's voice had steadied, and she let go of her worried robe and tried to smooth it out. "Poor Neville. At least now…Lily and James have little to fear."

"So we hope." The old man sighed. "That's enough of that, though. We may as well join the celebrations."

"I don't know if I can," McGonagall replied. "That poor boy…"

The two professors made their way through Diagon Alley and back to the Leaky Cauldron. In Godric's Hollow, a young boy named Harry Potter slept peacefully.

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I've decided chapter-connecting would mess up the flow of things. It really was meant to be a collection of drabbles in the beginning, a sort of what-if un-serious thing. Then I gave it a little plot and it got less drabble-y and more event-y. So I hope you guys can put up with the shortness—chapters get a bit longer nearing the twentieth.

Please review, young grasshoppers.