Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all other characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this version of the Mask belongs to New Line Cinemas; I'm just using them for this story.

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Harry Potter and the Mask of Loki

After a few hours of flying, Mark's eyes finally fell on the large form of Hogwarts, only about a mile or so ahead of him. He smiled in relief; this flying thing was all well and good, but it was getting a bit tiring having to keep up the vibrations necessary to allow him to fly.

Going in lower, Mark spun around briefly in mid-flight before re-emerging as a taller figure wearing green trousers and a bird-like mask, a mace in his hand and long feathered wings stretching out of his back.

Nodding briefly in approval, Mark flew onwards until he reached the tower that, if memory served, housed the Headmaster's office. Landing on the ledge, Mark spun around again, re-emerging in red trousers and gloves with a blue-and-red top and blue cowl, now only about six inches tall.

Hopping through the window, he spun around again and, when he landed on the floor of the office, he was dressed once again in the leather coat, checked shirt and blue jeans he'd appeared in when he'd destroyed the horcrux.

Looking around the office, Mark couldn't help but sigh slightly. It didn't look any different from when he'd last seen it- even Fawkes' stand hadn't been removed- but, somehow, it lacked for something that it had possessed during Dumbledore's time as headmaster.

Maybe it was the sense of security he'd always felt when in here….

After all, with Dumbledore dead, Hogwarts had lost the greatest headmaster it had ever known; not to Voldemort, but to a random Death Eater. The fact that the Death Eater in question had managed to fool everyone for nearly sixteen years didn't change the facts; he was still, in Mark's book, just a soldier, and not Voldemort himself.

Snape…

Mark clenched his fists and shook his head.

He knew he hated Snape with a passion that almost eclipsed his hatred of Voldemort, but he wouldn't allow himself to give in to his rage. If he got the chance, he'd hit Snape around so hard that the bastard wouldn't even have the chance to fire off a single spell at him…

But Harry Potter wouldn't kill Severus Snape, and neither would Mark Tiller. There was only one man either of them would kill. If they were fighting someone who wasn't that man, he'd get out of the fight alive; anyone else they didn't like would just get bashed as much as humanly possible.

"Which isn't to say that the bastard wouldn't deserve it…" Mark muttered to himself, as he raised one hand up to his face and clenched it as though wishing he had Voldemort's throat in the hand.

"Which 'bastard' would this be, Harry?" a voice said from behind him.

Spinning around at the voice, Mark visibly relaxed as he saw that the speaker was merely Dumbledore's portrait, smiling merely at him.

"P… professor?" Mark said, unable to conceal his uncertainty; even after over six years in the magical world, he still wasn't entirely clear on whether the paintings just had the memories of the subjects or were actually part of the subjects.

He was more inclined towards the paintings containing a fragment of a soul, but not in the same sense as a horcrux. After all, so many primitive cultures had once believed that photographs stole a fragment of the soul; why shouldn't there be some truth to that legend?

"Um… how did you know it was me?" he asked, deciding to attend to the most obvious question first. "There isn't…"

The portrait smiled. "No, Harry, I assure you, I did not identify you because of some obscure detail that may be noticed by anyone," he said, smiling again at the young wizard. "It is actually rather basic; Professor Binns came up earlier to tell me that you had been asking questions pertaining to the Mask of Loki. Now, unlike Miss Granger, you have never liked doing research into magical history or similar subjects, which rendered it unlikely that you had stumbled across a reference to it in a book and wished to know more about it. Given that, according to all reports, the Mask gives the user a green head while they wear it, and since there have been no major Death Eater attacks in the last few hours (to my knowledge) that may have resulted in the theft of some item or another from you or your friends, it seems a fairly safe assumption that you had come into the possession of the Mask, and have now come here because you wish to talk to me about something."

Then he sat back in the portrait and raised an enquiring eyebrow. "Now, have you anything you wish to say to me?"

Mark nodded, swallowed briefly…

And then spun around, apparently on instinct, emerging from the vortex as an extremely large and muscular green figure in purple trousers, who turned to look at Dumbledore with an extremely angry expression on his face.

"You bloody IDIOT!" he yelled at the portrait, veins standing out all over his arms and face, his anger almost cartoonishly exaggerated by the Mask's power. "I told you AGAIN and AGAIN that you couldn't trust that BASTARD! He sold out my PARENTS! He provoked Sirius into that fight that got him KILLED! And LOOK WHAT HE DID TO YOU! You're DEAD! You're DEAD AND I… I…"

He stopped, staring at Dumbledore as he sat serenely in the portrait, looking back at Mark with a small smile on his face.

"You… what, Harry?" he asked, his voice in the same soothing tone that Mark recognised from after his tantrum following Sirius's death a year ago.

Mark paused for a few moments. Then he slumped down onto the stone floor of the office, clasped his head in his hands, and began to cry.

"And I… I don't know what to do…" he said, between his sobs.

As he said it, Mark knew that it was true. He wasn't angry at Dumbledore for trusting Snape, although that was part of it.

He was angry at Dumbledore for leaving him to deal with this alone. He was angry at Dumbledore for leaving him to battle Voldemort, he was angry at Dumbledore for leaving him to destroy the horcruxes, he was…

Mark groaned.

He was even angry at Dumbledore for not being available to advise him on what he should have done regarding his relationship with Ginny. True, it would have felt awkward discussing that kind of thing with the headmaster, but it wouldn't have been that kind of advice; more asking him whether or not he should continue to see Ginny, or if leaving her to protect her was the best strategy…

Well; what was done was done. He'd started the potential of something with Ginny as Mark, and he'd see who that went later. Right now, things were as they were, and he had other matters to attend to.

Standing up, Mark spun around again, reappearing in the increasingly familiar coat, shirt and jeans that Mark seemed to favour above all other clothes, before looking back at Dumbledore with a slightly sheepish expression.

"Sorry 'bout that, Professor," he said, grinning slightly with what he hoped was a disarming grin.

Dumbledore smiled. "It is quite all right, Harry," he said, before his grin faded and he looked at Harry with a more serious expression. "Now, I presume that you did not merely come here for the pleasure of my company?"

"Yeah," Mark said, nodding before looking back at the portrait. "I… I found one of the other horcruxes."

"Indeed?" Dumbledore said, raising an eyebrow in a gesture that could have been either surprise or approval; Mark chose to take it as approval until further notice. "Where and which?"

"It was in the orphanage where Voldemort grew up, sir," Mark replied. "It was Hufflepuff's cup; I destroyed it with a shotgun I… uh, pulled out of my pocket?" he said, grinning sheepishly. Even to him, the words sounded stupid, and he'd done it.

Dumbledore, thankfully, merely nodded.

"Yes, it was said that the Mask could give its user powers like that," he said, as he looked at Mark. "It was a good thing you used that method, Harry; horcruxes cannot be destroyed by conventional spells or non-magical weapons."

"Really?" Mark said, looking at Dumbledore curiously. "But then, why was I able to destroy the diary with a basilisk fang?"

Then he answered his own question. "Because the basilisk is a magical creature and so its venom counted as a magical weapon, right?"

"Correct," Dumbledore said, nodding in approval as he looked at Mark. "That was actually one of the main problems I had in destroying the horcrux in the ring. Since little is known about horcruxes, and I had already failed to destroy it with conventional spells, I merely put it on my finger to transport it back to Hogwarts, my robes, unfortunately, lacking pockets. This, unfortunately, turned out to be nearly my undoing."

"How?" Mark asked, looking at his mentor curiously.

"It would appear that, if the object is used for what it was originally intended, the horcrux will begin to take them over, supplanting their souls with the fragment within it," Dumbledore explained. "Fortunately, I put it on a hand that had been injured in the fight, so its attempts to control my actions were delayed long enough for me to get to Hogwarts, where-"

"Snape managed to work out a way of containing the soul in the horcrux and not spreading to you, right?" Mark put in.

He sighed. "So that's what the bastard did…"

"It did save my life, Harry," Dumbledore said, sighing as he looked at his now-green-headed protégé. "I must be grateful."

"But it cost you your hand!" Mark yelled in frustration. "What's so good about that!"

"There was no other way, Harry," Dumbledore replied. "The horcrux had been inefficiently destroyed. I had to keep the ring on my hand to prevent the horcrux from regenerating itself over time. With all the potions in my system, coupled with the spells that Snape had helped me cast, the soul fragment in the horcrux could not regenerate."

"Oh, so that's why you stopped wearing the ring!" Mark said, clicking his fingers as inspiration struck home.

Then he frowned. "But why couldn't you heal your hand?"

Dumbledore shrugged. "A necessary extra precaution; the horcrux may have been able to use the magic that would heal my hand to regenerate itself. So long as that hand received no treatment, there was no excess magical power for the horcrux to feed from, and thus it would eventually die."

"Ah," Mark said, nodding thoughtfully. The premises of the theory seemed to make sense, although he hoped that he'd never have to resort to such desperate measures to destroy a horcrux; the scar was more than enough of a memento of what Voldemort had done to him…

Then he shook his head and sighed as he looked back at Dumbledore. "Anyway, on the topic of horcruxes, did you have any other possible locations where he might have hidden one?"

"A few possibilities spring to mind," Dumbledore said. "The Riddle House and the Chamber of Secrets are plausible candidates, but I find that unlikely. Firstly, he could not access the Chamber of Secrets after he left Hogwarts without someone knowing of his presence in the school, so he cannot have left anything here recently-"

"And before he left, the only horcruxes he could have created were the ring and the diary, right?" Mark added. He shrugged. "Well, I didn't want to go back down there anyway."

Looking back up at Dumbledore, he smiled slightly. "And I think I can safely say you don't think the horcrux is at the Riddle house, right?" he asked.

"Indeed," Dumbledore said, nodding at Mark. "May I ask how you came to this conclusion?"

Mark shrugged. "Well, all his Death Eaters know about it now, don't they? He may have forgiven them publicly, but I don't think he'd want to risk any of them turning against him. After all, after thirteen years without him, maybe some of them… I dunno, kind of preferred being able to go about on their own steam?"

Then he sighed, and looked back at Dumbledore, a regretful expression in his eyes. "Then… well, there's the locket…"

"Yes, I gathered a bit about that," Dumbledore said, nodding thoughtfully. "Someone called 'R.A.B.' who referred to Voldemort as 'the Dark Lord', correct? And since only Death Eaters have ever referred to Voldemort as such…"

"Yeah, it seemed to add up," Mark said. He groaned and slumped down against the desk, staring up at the ceiling. "But who… who…"

"Harry," Dumbledore said, looking scoldingly at the young wizard, "you shouldn't push yourself so hard. You've already destroyed one horcrux this night; I think that will be enough for now. You cannot allow yourself to become so committed to this goal that you neglect the other things in life, or you would-"

"'Be no better than Voldemort', I know," Mark said, as he looked back at Dumbledore and sighed again. "I know that, sir… it's just… it's just hard, you know? After all these years of having the possibility of that bastard trying to kill me hanging over my head, I finally have a means of stopping him, and I just… I just want to get it over with, you know?"

He stared down at the ground, resting his forehead on his knees as he bent his legs into a foetal-like position. "I just want to be able to be me, not the bloody Boy Who Lived…"

"Ah; so that's why you haven't taken the Mask off since we started talking, I assume?" Dumbledore put in. "It lets you do that without worrying what people will think of you?"

Mark blinked in surprise.

He hadn't thought of it like that. He'd just kept the Mask on because it seemed easier than taking it off and putting it back on again after they'd finished, to go to… wherever it was he'd go to next.

But, then again, Dumbledore did have a point. Hadn't Binns said that the Mask released the side of the wearer's personality that the wearer didn't show to the public? Hadn't he felt a greater sense of freedom at the party last night than he'd ever felt when he was Harry?

(OK, he'd felt that relaxed around Ginny and Hedwig, but that was about it; even with Ron and Hermione, on some level, he always felt like he had to be the hero, not the boy…)

Mark sighed as he looked up at the portrait.

"Maybe…" he said, nodding thoughtfully. Then he glanced at his watch and sighed again. "Nearly morning."

"And, if I recall my mythology, Loki was a night god, and his Mask thus does not work at night, correct?" Dumbledore asked.

Mark nodded. "So… what do I do?"

"Simple," Dumbledore said, indicating his office. "You just sleep here; Minerva doesn't come in over the summer anyway. Besides, you might as well wait here; there is someone who comes here often who I feel shall be of invaluable help to you in the future."

"Who?" Mark asked, looking at Dumbledore curiously.

Dumbledore just looked up at something behind Mark, and smiled.

"There he is," he said.

Mark turned around, and saw, to his surprise, on the stand behind him…

"Fawkes!" Mark said, smiling at the beautiful gold-and-red bird that was standing there, looking at him with what could almost be a smile if you ignored the fact that beaks weren't adapted for that.

He looked back at Dumbledore in confusion. "But… but I thought Fawkes left Hogwarts after you… you know…"

"Yes, he did," Dumbledore said, nodding in agreement before turning to look back at the bird behind Harry. "However, he has a certain… attachment to you, shall we say? After all, your wand does use one of his tail feathers for its core; bonds between a wizard and a phoenix in such a case are invariably present. Fawkes returned mid-way through the month, but has been waiting here ever since; I took it to mean that he was waiting for you, and knew that here was a place you might reasonably be expected to return to."

"Really?" Mark said, looking at Fawkes with more than a slight degree of awe. "Help from a phoenix… wow…"

Reaching out, he stroked at Fawkes's chest feathers, and was rewarded with a brief trill of phoenix song from the bird as it looked at him; evidently, like Dumbledore, Fawkes still knew who he was under the Mask.

Mark smiled; with Fawkes to help him out in his search, things were already starting to look up…