The next morning, an unfamiliar owl brought a letter for Ron. Ron did not read it at the breakfast table, but hid it swiftly in his pocket, unopened. His freckles were dark against the sudden whiteness of his face. Soon after, he pushed the rest of his food away and left the Gryffindor table. He did not look back, or offer a word of explanation for his hasty exit.

Ron was not in class that day, and not in the Great Hall at tea time. Harry looked for him in the dormitory. There was no sign of Ron, but a corner of Harry's trunk was sticking out much further than it had that morning. Harry checked quickly; his invisibility cloak was missing. He wondered where Ron had gone, and what his letter had said.

It was only in the evening, as Harry went to the dormitory again to retrieve the silver locket from under his pillow before meeting with Dumbledore, that he saw Ron again. He was lying on his bed now, looking up at the faded velvet canopy above, lost in distant thoughts.

"Ron! Are you all right?"

"Yes," Ron whispered, "I'm all right..."

Harry looked at him curiously; a change had come over his friend, but he did not quite understand what it was. There was a quiet glow, a little smile, a loss of innocence...

"You met with him today, then?" Harry asked hesitantly.

Ron nodded. "They'll probably give me hell for missing classes." It didn't sound as if he cared all that much.

"Where-?"

"The Shrieking Shack."

"Nice."

Ron laughed. "Well, we can't all meet our lovers in the Gryffindor dormitory at night, you know..."

Harry froze.

"How do you know-?"

Ron smiled. "Oh, come on, Harry. I see you in the morning when you wake up. You always reach out before you open your eyes, searching for someone who is no longer there..."

"Oh."

Ron regarded him curiously. "Who is it? You can tell me, you know. I won't tell a soul. At first I thought it was one of the other boys from Gryffindor, perhaps Dean or Seamus, but then I thought I would have seen it in your face if it was... But you don't look at any of them any differently. Or any of the girls, for that matter."

Harry didn't know what to say. "He - he only comes here at night... But he is not my lover."

Then he remembered the trembling kiss from the night before. "Well, not yet..." The words had escaped him before he could think, and he felt himself blush. He wondered if the stranger could hear him, somehow... Where did he go during the day? Was he nearby?

He swallowed. "What about you and Remus-? Are you-?""

Ron simply looked at him and nodded, his face bright red.

"Remus - He is beautiful you know, even with all his scars-" Ron's voice drifted off. Something in his expression reminded Harry of Slughorn, the way he had looked in the Pensieve, when gazing at Tom. "He wouldn't believe at first that someone found him beautiful... Oh, I don't care that he is a werewolf, that he calls himself a monster. Am I mad for falling in love with a monster?"

"No," Harry whispered. "These things happen..."

And with a sense of wonder he realized that Ron was not the only one who loved a monster. He wished, suddenly, that the day was over; he longed for the dark and its sweet secrets, for the stranger's lingering touch...

Then he recalled what he had come for: the silver locket. He yanked it out from under his pillow.

"What's that?" Ron was vaguely curious.

Harry looked at the horcrux; it was cold and heavy in his hand. He sighed. "Salazar Slytherin's locket. I'm bringing it to Dumbledore. He collects these things."

"Oh. Strange man, Dumbledore."

"I suppose you could say that," muttered Harry, sliding the horcrux into his pocket.

...

Dumbledore was already dressed in his traveling cloak. He smiled conspiratorially at Harry: "So, are you ready for our mission tonight, Harry?"

Then he frowned. "That sweater is not enough, my boy, you will need a heavier cloak; it's chilly by the sea..." Was Dumbledore worried that Harry was going to catch a cold before he died? How touching.

"There is no need to travel to the seaside, headmaster."

"What?" Dumbledore stared at him. "But I thought I explained this to you last night, Harry. Maybe you didn't understand me. I have very good reason to believe that the locket horcrux is hidden in a particular cave by the sea."

Wordlessly, Harry reached into his pocket, pulled out the locket and put it on the desk in front of Dumbledore.

Dumbledore looked as if he had seen a ghost. For a moment, he simply stared at the locket, his eyes wide in absolute incomprehension. Then he picked it up and turned it slowly over in his hands.

"Where - where did you get this, Harry?" he whispered.

"It came from the cave by the sea, like you said."

"But - I don't understand..." Dumbledore sank back in his chair, turning the locket over and over with trembling hands.

"It's not the real horcrux," said Harry calmly. "I opened it already. It is the one from the cave, but someone had stolen the real horcrux and replaced it with a copy. There was a note inside, explaining it all."

Dumbledore fumbled with the lock for a moment. Then he opened the silver locket and found the note within. He read it in silence.

Then he looked at Harry. There was something in the headmaster's glance that made Harry tremble. How could he ever have thought that Dumbledore was a kind old man? "Harry, I really must insist that you tell me how you got this..."

Harry shrugged. "I found it on my pillow. Someone must have left it there for me. Rather odd, isn't it, Professor Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore's next words made no sense at all. He stood up, suddenly terrifying in his wrath, and shouted at Harry: "No man alive could have retrieved that locket but myself. Did you make Sirius do this? Did he get it for you?"

"Sirius?" Had Dumbledore lost his mind? Surely he remembered that Sirius was dead?

Then Dumbledore's face became familiar again. He shook his head, slowly, and looked at Harry, the well-known twinkle back in his blue eyes . "I'm sorry, Harry. Of course you had nothing to do with it. I can see it in your face."

"See what?"

"Ah." Dumbledore's hands, the slender white one and the other, the dead and blackened one, formed a perfect pyramid against his chin. "No, of course you would never try to raise the dead. What a notion! I have a mystery on my hands, Harry," he said softly. "And I wondered for a moment if it was connected to your inexplicable possession of Slytherin's locket. You found it on your pillow?"

"I did." Harry leaned forward, assuming his most innocent expression. "Professor, I believe someone is playing games with me - "

Dumbledore blinked, then nodded swiftly. "Harry, I think you are on to something!" There was suppressed excitement in his voice. "Yes, that would explain it. Something evil is afoot in this castle; I would not be surprised if it turned out Lord Voldemort was behind it all, somehow or the other... A horcrux on your pillow! What could that possibly be, other than a challenge?"

A gift... A gift from my protector... Harry wisely kept his thoughts to himself.

Dumbledore leaned forward. "Harry, something sinister is happening. Just this morning, I discovered that something has been stolen from my office!"

"Stolen? What?"

Judging by Dumbledore's dramatic whisper, Harry half expected him to say that the Pensieve itself had vanished in a swirl of thoughts, that nothing stirred anymore in Fawkes' sorry pile of ashes, or that the Sorting Hat had been kidnapped by an unsorted villain. He almost laughed when Dumbledore said hoarsely: "The snitch, Harry.The snitch I kept in my desk. The one you caught during your first Quidditch game."

Harry wondered if he was dreaming. Dumbledore suspected that Voldemort might be infiltrating Hogwarts, and he was worried about his misplaced sports memorabilia? What? And what kind of snitch had the power to raise the dead, anyway?

"The snitch. The snitch is missing, professor?" A sudden thought struck him. Perhaps Voldemort wasn't the only one hiding treasures in unlikely objects?

He looked intently at Dumbledore. "What was inside that snitch, professor?"

"Oh, Harry." Dumbledore looked at him, a look of gentle worry on his face. "Something you, in your innocence, have never dreamed of. A magic stone, the necromancer's dream... The resurrection stone..."

...

Finally. Harry sank into the gentle darkness, into the stranger's waiting arms. Questions. He had a lot of questions. But they could all wait. His mouth found the stranger's lips; his body felt the heat of the other's body under his clothes; his hands tore at the offending fabric that separated him from the warmth of the stranger's limbs...

Warmth. The stranger's warmth against his own. How beautiful he was! Harry found that he no longer cared what the stranger looked like in the light. The light of day is a luminous liar, showing nothing but the surface of things; only in the dark do things appear as they really are...

"I'm in love with you." He wispered his confession against the soft curve of the stranger's lips, so curiously familiar.

A fierce kiss in return, and then a bewildered voice in the dark: "You are in love with me? Harry, you don't know who I am - "

He moaned softly as Harry's mouth found its way down his neck. "Don't be absurd," Harry mumbled against his shoulder,"of course I know who you are..."

Harry felt the warm limbs stiffen beneath him. "You know-?"

"Of course I know. I know it better than you do. I don't know your name, but I know you..." His kisses traveled further down the stranger's body. The stranger... No, not a stranger anymore. His lover. Monster or angel, it hardly seemed to matter. Mere names, of little consequence, compared to the reality of the skin under his touch. He felt the smooth flesh awaken under his kisses, felt his lover's arousal rise against his lips. A moan of protest, and another one, a sweeter, of surrender. The scent of desire... The hardness against his lips... The taste of salt and earth, so new and so familiar, so human...

A scream in the darkness, fingers entwined in his hair... His mouth filled with thick and salty liquid. I am tasting you, tasting your very essence. Felix Felicis was nothing like this...

A gentle kiss, and a soft whisper against his face. "Harry... Tell me, my love, do you love my body or my soul-?" Something in his voice was desperate for an answer.

Harry held his lover, tight against his body. "Don't be absurd. Those are meaningless names, arbitrary distinctions made up by philosophers who know nothing of love. I love you."