Stolen Lives
Summary: During his search for the Dark Lord's Horcruxes, Harry finds something else, something with the potential to become either a great asset or a great threat. Ancient Spirits, Forgotten History, Shadow Magic and an all about crazy twist to his life is what this young wizard will have to deal with. Slash. Rated for Violence.
Chapter 3: Steal it Back
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Life kept going on, the clock kept ticking, the Earth kept spinning and Harry Potter kept obsessing over some ancient piece of gaudy jewelry.
The young wizard had by now lost count of how many times Hermione had asked him to drop Regulus' journal and focus on the more important things like, say, recovering the locket. After finding no clue in the journal as to the locket's location, Harry had stopped fighting the idea and finally brought himself to ask Kreacher.
What had followed was a very interesting if tragic story about the elf's master sacrificing his life to obtain the Horcrux and leaving the elf the order to destroy the blasted thing. Of course Horcruxes were very resilient things and it appeared they were elf-magic-proof as well, so Kreacher had not been able to do away with the thing and had kept it hidden in Grimauld Place, the same house they were now staying at. Since nothing could ever be quite so simple for Harry, the Horcrux was obviously not there now, having been stolen by – surprise, surprise – Mundungus Fletcher.
After being questioned – and 'tortured' by a slightly deranged house-elf – Dung had finally confessed that he had indeed stolen the locket but – Potter luck true to the end – he didn't have it in his possession anymore as it had been taken by none other than Dolores Umbridge, who was now back to working at the Ministry.
The whole thing was enough to give Harry a serious headache and make him curse more gods than he knew the name of. Of course, it certainly hadn't helped that he had so far been unable to concentrate properly on things, feeling anxious all the time and hardly able to stay still. It was a strange feeling, like something compelled him to go somewhere, but he didn't know where to so he just kept moving in his place or sometimes pacing the room like a caged lion – no pun intended.
After a couple of days, Hermione – who seemed to be the brains behind the whole operation, for obvious reasons – had finally given up on him and assigned him watch duty to try and keep him entertained for a while. Watch duty was part of their plan to recover the locket and consisted on hiding under the invisibility cloak and observing Ministry workers, trying to come up with the safest possible way to go in, steal the locker from Umbridge's office and go back out unnoticed.
It was precisely as he sat there, bored out his mind as he saw the hundredth person go into the public bathrooms and not come out, that a sudden idea…no, a sudden sure knowledge, came to his mind. It was sort of a gut feeling, the kind that had been saving his life almost continuously since he was eleven years old, and the kind he was used to listening by now.
He knew he felt a strange pull whenever he saw the bracelet's drawing in that old journal and he had been having the feeling for days now that he had felt that same pull some other time before, but he could never quite remember when. Apparently, dull and boring moments in life work surprisingly well in bringing back old and half-faded memories because now he could finally recall.
It really was no wonder that he hadn't been able to remember before, as it had happened years ago, back in his fourth year. Of course, so much had happened in his fourth year that a little thing like some unknown pull at his mind could be easily overlooked; especially as it had happened the very night of Voldemort's resurrection. Being as he had been much too busy trying to keep a back-from-the-dead Dark Lord from murdering him in cold blood, he had hardly paid attention to the strange feeling of something calling at him, and by the time he was safe and sound again it had been pushed out of his mind.
Now though, that he was experiencing the same thing whenever he looked at the picture in that old journal, he knew that it was an identical feeling and to him that sounded like a lead to finding the bracelet. And now that he was entertaining the idea, it did make a lot of sense if he'd felt the bracelet – how does one feel a pull from a fashion accessory, anyways? – back in that graveyard if it was indeed another Horcrux. Maybe Voldemort had had it with him back then or maybe…
The teen almost bolted out of his seat as the idea hit him, sudden and obvious. 'Maybe it wasn't in the graveyard, but the house near it'.
It would make a lot of sense too, because Dumbledore had mentioned something about Voldemort leaving his Horcruxes in places that had some significance to him, and some link to his past. That mansion was where he had murdered his muggle family, where Voldemort saw himself as overcoming his dirty lineage and 'purifying' his blood by getting rid of the Riddles. To Harry that sounded a lot like a good place to hide a Horcrux and being that Harry shared a link with the Dark Lord, he considered himself expert enough in the matter of Voldemort to be right.
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His friends had unfortunately not shared his enthusiasm over his findings – also considered crazy ideas by many – and were very reluctant – read: skeptic – over the whole thing.
"Well, what else are we going to do in the meantime?"Harry asked, his voice slightly raised and practically screaming exasperation. Obviously they had been over this quite a few times already.
"We already know where one is, let's get that one first before running after another one" Ron answered, surprisingly level-headed for once.
"He's right, Harry. We don't even know if that bracelet is a Horcrux so we should focus on the locket and…"
"And what?" Harry asked, now annoyed enough to interrupt Hermione before she even finished repeating what she'd been telling him since he first proposed the idea of going after the bracelet. "We already know everything we can find out about going into the Ministry and the Polyjuice Potion we need is not going to be finished for another week"* He said, his voice slowly coming back to a level that could be considered civil before the green-eyed teen sighed, calmer now. "Face it, Mione, we're just sitting around doing nothing, might as well use the time we have"
At his words the other two went quiet and seemed to be at the very least considering his idea. Using the opportunity Harry decided to make the deal sweeter while he could and before either of his friends had the chance to come up with another reason not to just do it.
"After all, the sooner we're done, the sooner the war ends and the less people who die or get hurt." Oh, he felt horrible for saying it like that, knowing that there was no way his friends would be able to deny that, but he just had to get to that bracelet. To destroy it, of course…of course.
"Alright" Hermione finally gave up with a sigh. "So, you are the only one out of us who's ever been to that place so you're going to have to side-along apparate us there and then…"
And finally, the plan was coming together and he could almost feel the bracelet around his wrist now. Strange, since he had no knowledge of what material it was made of, or its size or even its weight and still, there was the phantom feeling of metal caressing his skin and fitting as though tailored around his wrist. Strange, but Harry was more than willing to let it go for now, focusing instead on the planning and plotting.
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In the end, the plan turned out to be the simple good ol' sneaking around, of which the three of them had had plenty of practice during their tenure at Hogwarts. Harry indeed apparated the other two along, but as he'd never been in the house – and he didn't think seeing it in a Voldemort-induced vision counted enough to risk apparating – they started their trek at the graveyard, hidden beneath the relative security of his invisibility cloak.
Harry could not help the shudders that ran through his body every once in a while as he and his friends walked through the crumbling headstones and overgrown lawn, his overactive mind bringing forth the memories of that night that literally changed his life – and everyone else's. However it seemed that his determination to see this through – and see his bracelet! – was more than enough to help him overcome the shadows of the past, plus the fact that Harry was a naturally brave person, extremely so if past adventures were any proof.
Finally, the three reached the mansion and pulled off the cloak that was now barely able to cover the three grown teenagers as it had when they were children. Harry motioned the other two quiet and pulled out his wand, quickly casting the 'alohomora' charm that Hermione had taught him back in first year and opening the old oak door.
The inside of Riddle manor was decidedly creepy, its furniture practically crumbling and, if the several cracks running through the walls and roof were any clue, so was the building itself. Practically every inch of the interior was covered by a layer, or three, of dust, with more than the occasional cobweb adorning corners and roofs. It wasn't a pretty sight at all, but Harry knew they were in the right place, he could feel it.
Unfortunately, they weren't alone at the manor for very long. What the three of them had not counted on – and Harry would later beat himself over since it was so very obvious – was that the Dark Lord wasn't stupid enough to leave the place completely unguarded. It was perhaps that Voldemort was counting on Harry telling someone about the manor having been used by him before, or that the boy would consider the possibility that it was still being used as headquarters and get it into his Gryffindor head to attack the place in some brave heroic nonsense. Whatever the reason, the fact was that there were alarm wards placed on the ancient house, and they had been breached.
Now, as the name states, what an alarm ward does is send a signal to a particular person, or group of people, it was anchored to and let them know that whatever they had warded was in danger, remarkably similar to a muggle silent alarm system with the only difference being a much faster, and in this case much more violent, reaction.
The three teens had barely made it past the living room, Harry guiding the other two still skeptic friends, when the sound of several apparitions broke through the eerie silence in the manor. The young heroes didn't even have to look before knowing that these newcomers were hostile, probably due to the bunch of brightly-colored beams of light that were shot at them. The reaction was immediate.
They formed a circle facing their enemies and protecting each other's back at the same time, but their tight formation also made them a much easier target. They traded curses and jinxes with the masked death eaters, a reducto here, an incarcerous there and a good bunch of stupefy's to try and overcome their enemy.
The death eaters, however, weren't quite as easy to defeat as the Gryffindors were hoping for and gave off as good as they got, or much worse actually. They answered the relatively innocent fire of the three teens with cutting curses, burning hexes, Harry though he even saw a blood-boiling curse fly somewhere past his ear, and the ever-present killing curse; so even if the teens were hit just once, it was sure to put them down for a very long while if not permanently.
The situation was getting desperate, magic flying everywhere and connecting with either shied spells or the already weak structure of the house, people screaming incantations or orders and warnings, pieces of roof and broken furniture flying everywhere like some bizarre rain of debris, and Harry could swear he almost felt Death itself coming for them, the atmosphere suddenly heavy and tense even amidst the chaos of battle.
And that's when he felt it. Its call was louder than the shouts of anger, or pain, or desperation, and its magic was stronger than the multitude of spells that danced dangerously around him. It captivated him at the same time it scared him, but he could not ignore it, could not deny it. The young wizard didn't even pay attention as Ron desperately held on to him and yelled at him to come back, to not go on his own, that separating was too dangerous and he could die. But he couldn't hear Ron's voice, or Hermione's pleas to stop, he could not even hear his own thoughts.
He ran, with a speed and determination he was sure he had never achieved before in his life, with spells brushing against his skin and Death licking at his heels, but he kept on running. Three of the five death eaters followed after him, tearing from room to room and then up the stairs with broken steps as they tried vainly to catch the ever elusive Boy-Who-Lived. But Harry wouldn't be caught; he couldn't be caught, not now that he was oh-so very close.
He went into some apparently random room, knocking the weakened wooden door down with one shoulder and leaping towards a very old chest that sat innocently right in the center of the room. The death eaters had caught up with him by now, as the impact with the door had slowed him down a couple of precious seconds, and he could feel one grabbing on to the back of his shirt, but he would not give up.
He kept moving forwards, dragging the still clinging death eater with him and causing the two to fall right on top of the chest. The wooden structure was not strong enough to hold the weight of two men impacting on it all of the sudden and broke down like a house of cards blow by the wind. Harry had ended up under the death eater, whose weight and size was greater than his own and so was holding him down effortlessly, and he had lost his wand in the fall.
All in all, helpless situation.
"Grab him and we'll take him to the Dark Lord" the other death eater said, the one who was now standing by the door and still pointing his wand towards the incapacitated teenager.
"We're gonna be rewarded for this" the one sitting on top of Harry said with a sneer, and you could practically feel the greed and sick triumph radiate off him.
"Get off me!" Exclaimed the still trapped teenager furiously, struggling with the same ferocity his house mascot would have displayed but sadly having the same results a newborn kitten would have.
It was a stroke of luck, the kind of luck which you are never sure is good or bad – Potter luck indeed – that made Harry's hand brush with something not wooden or broken as he fought with his captor. It was metal, cold but warm and so painfully familiar that the feeling made him loose his breath and freeze.
The death eater seemed to think that he had finally given up and slacked his hold on the younger wizard only the smallest bit, but it was enough. Quick as a striking snake, Harry's hand moved towards the metal thing and grasped it tightly, apparently unwilling to ever let go of it. As he dug the thing out of the pile of splinters that was the remains of the broken chest, he only had the briefest of seconds to notice that it was his bracelet – at last! – before everything went black.
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Author's Notes: Cliffhanger! Though I'm sure we all know what's gonna happen next XD
Longest chapter yet for this story! ^-^ I felt like I might have been rushing it a bit in this one, but I didn't want to write five chapters of Harry moping around and obsessing over the bracelet while trying to find clues about its location so yeah…and besides, this is only were the real important parts of the story will begin ^_^
Thank you guys for the reviews! ^_^
Yoruko Rhapsodos: Well, it might have belonged to him or might not have belonged to him at all ^_- wizards seem to have this obsession with relating anything with snakes to Slytherin though, even if snakes existed long before the man. You'll find out for sure in the next chapter though ^-^
Sweet-little-Yugi: Ah! Thank you for that, I always mix those two up even though I told myself I would be careful with that confusion this time :P Sorry about that, I've fixed it now ^-^
DemonKittyAngel: That's okay, everyone is entitled to have their favorite pairing ^_^ When on a strictly YGO fic, I'm actually quite a fan of Tendershipping myself XD
aliengirlguy: Oh, the interesting is just about to begin XD