"So, um… I had a chat with Dumbledore and he thinks that the Tournament, the whole disguised Moody thing and Cedric going to that graveyard may be related to somebody trying to kill me." Harry scratched the back of his head uncomfortably. "We figure it's old Voldy back, again. Professor Dumbledore reckons that he may have built some kind of soul container to keep him immortal, only he's obviously made a few of them because apparently the diary I destroyed in second year was one as well and the bastard came back again after that."

Hermione mentally reviewed everything she knew about souls and came to the conclusion that the rituals to create them were very powerful and extremely Dark. She gasped accordingly.

Harry's redheaded friend just rubbed his nose and asked sharply, "And Dumbledore just told you all this?"

The wizard chuckled awkwardly. "I told him that if he didn't explain to me exactly how Voldemort kept coming back, I would go find him and ask him myself."

"So my plan worked then," noted Ron, grinning.

Harry bowed his head in a show of mock respect. "Oh great and wise Weasley, do tell of your wonderful plan."

"Well," Ron began, putting on a show of arrogance of a nearly Malfoy scale. "You see, Mr Potter, Dumbledore clearly knew something that he wasn't keen on telling."

"Yes, yes, we knew that already," Hermione interrupted impatiently.

Ron conjured a pipe and puffed at it thoughtfully before he continued. "While I myself was still extremely irritated at my dearest friend, having been goaded into jealousy by Malfoy earlier."

Harry snickered lightly at his friend's play-acting.

"I wanted Harry to finally know what he needed to do, because every time we only knew a little bit of information, we would spend an entire year working the thing out with Harry always taking the glory at the end- oh, and nearly being killed, of course. It occurred to me that we could stop the whole damn process if I just asked Professor Dumbledore what was happening before we did anything stupid in fifth year."

"We don't spend an enti-" Hermione began, then stopped. "Oh. We do tend to spend an entire year working on this crap, don't we? And Dumbledore always knows anyway- with the Stone, about Tom Riddle and even about Sirius being an animagus. We could have saved so much time!"

Ron nodded regally, puffing on his pipe. Harry conjured him a matching detective hat and Ron grinned his approval. "Indeed. Naturally, however, Harry is Dumbledore's favourite and he wouldn't trust me with such information; thus I created a cunning plan with which I would, in an incredibly sneaky and clever way, determine the nature of Harry's quest."

"It's hardly a quest," protested Harry.

"Of course it's a quest, Harry- hidden magical artefacts, a hero with special powers and the fate of the world. You can't get much more quest-y than that," Hermione told him briskly. "Could you get to the end of the story, Ron?"

Ron puffed at his pipe (which was empty, incidentally, but made him feel like a real detective) and continued. "So I told Harry my plan and then hurried off to enact stage one. I waited with the Marauder's Map until Dumbledore was about to exit his office and then strolled past with Harry, exclaiming loudly about how I was so surprised to hear about how he wanted to transfer to Beauxbatons in order to escape all the shenanigans that happened here. Harry, of course, immediately explained that he would need a really good explanation of why all this crap keeps happening for him to stay here. I pipe up with a joke about Harry visiting Voldemort for the information and then Harry just sort of stops and goes really still… brilliant acting there, by the way."

Harry shrugged modestly.

"Anyway, Dumbledore races back into his office and we go back to the Gryffindor common room. I give Harry a really good pep talk and then he goes out to confront the Headmaster."

Hermione blinked. "That was your brilliant, conniving plan?"

"What did you expect?" Ron asked, clearly offended. "Simplicity meant that it was unlikely to go wrong and it wasn't like something big and complicated would have worked better."

The bushy-haired Gryffindor just looked amused.

"I thought it was a great plan," defended Harry. "Especially since it only took about ten minutes to complete, including Dumbledore telling me everything."

Hermione shrugged. "Whatever. In the meantime, how do we plan to get rid of these- what are they called?"

"Whore-crotches, apparently."

"Right," Hermione replied sceptically. "How to we plan to dispose of them?"

Ron fiddled idly with his pipe. "If we're going for the simplistic approach…"

Half an hour later

"Dumbledore's office is clear," Hermione announced, not looking up from the Marauder's Map.

Harry and Ron leapt into action, sprinting up the spiral staircase and bursting into the office with speed. Within moments, the sword of Gryffindor was retrieved, along with the Sorting Hat, Fawkes and a previous Headmaster's portrait that had perked up at their mangled use of the word 'Horcrux.'

The three gathered in an empty classroom to review. "We're sure that this will work?" Harry asked nervously.

"Of course," Hermione replied reassuringly.

Ron just mentally reviewed the plan. "We're sure about the house elves?"

Harry nodded.

"We're sure about the sword?"

"It's an incredibly ancient and powerful weapon, if it can't do it then nothing can."

"Alright then."

Their plan was actually quite logical. Piece by piece, their solutions made sense, but when you added it into a whole picture, the plan looked totally insane. On the other hand, insane solutions work most of the time, so they may as well in this particular instance.

Making their way to the Great Hall, the trio took places on top of the Head Table during the feast involving the three schools that were still here.

"Ladies and Gentleman, your attention please," called Ron. Harry was actually supposed to do this bit, but he had blushed and backed out at the last minute. "Would you please link arms in a giant circle on the grounds? There is an event that needs to occur tonight," he announced, stressing the last word. At that, the eyes of the student population glazed over and they moved to do his bidding while the teachers simply fell asleep in their chairs.

"Well, at least we know that the house elves did their bit properly," Hermione murmured to Harry as they followed the stream of students onto the great rolling front lawn of Hogwarts. "I really didn't expect such an illegal, mind-controlling substance to be so easy to brew…"

Enhancing his voice with a 'sonorous,' the youngest male Weasley instructed the group. "At the red fireworks, you are all to cast the 'accio' spell pointing outside the circle. You will be Summoning an object called a 'Horcrux.' Do you understand?"

The crowd nodded in unison. Hermione, Harry and Ron joined the outwardly-facing circle, linking arms but leaving their hands free for wandwork. Ron shot red fireworks into the air.

"Accio Horcrux," intoned the three schools, the combined voices becoming a wave of sound that washed across the Isles with their magic. The trio stepped out of the circle, linking the arms of the people to fill the gap. Harry drew Gryffindor's sword and held it aloft while Ron and Hermione stayed alert for any flying objects.

Within a moment, a gaudy black ring had fallen from the sky, which Harry dispatched swiftly. Thirty seconds after that, an overly shiny tiara appeared; it was only with Hermione's intervention that the headpiece didn't kill Harry, with the speed it was moving. About a minute after that came an ostentatious cup, an awkwardly sized locket and the ruined diary, both needing timely intervention to allow their destruction.

Harry took a quick stocktake on the items in the circle. "Five. Do you think that's it?"

Hermione noticed that Harry was gravitating towards the centre of the circle and became very still as her mind worked furiously.

"What is it, Hermione?" Ron called. The witch simply pointed to her black-haired friend, knowing that the redhead would understand.

He stared questioningly for a few moments, and then froze as he got it.

"Damn." He said simply.

Harry was ignoring both of them, trying to work out if there was anything else.

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment, and then strode over to her friend. Ron joined her, clasping her hand for comfort. The pretty witch had tears welling up into her eyes and Ron was blinking rather more profusely than normal.

"Harry," Hermione said gently. He looked up with a smile, which quickly fell when he saw their sombre expressions. "Look at where you are."

"I'm in the middle, so what?"

"You began on the side, not the centre," Ron told him.

Harry still didn't understand.

"You can speak to snakes, Harry. Nobody in your family could do it; only Voldemorts' family. Only his blood."

Harry was starting to get a really bad feeling but refused to acknowledge what his gut was trying to tell him.

"So?"

Ron sighed deeply. "You've been getting visions all year and in first year, you'd get a pain in your scar whenever you looked at Quirrell."

"Who we later discovered was Voldemort," added Hermione, to make their point perfectly clear.

"So?" he was being aggressively stubborn now.

"So you're a Horcrux, you dumb berk!" Ron finally cried, his voice becoming hoarse from suppressed emotion.

Harry blinked at them.

"So what am I supposed to do?"

Hermione drew him into a chest-crushing hug, sobbing into his shoulder. Ron just stared. "You know what needs to be done, Harry."

Harry took a deep breath, pushing his friend away. He stepped slightly closer to Ron. "Will you do it for me?"

Ron looked deep into his best friend's eyes and replied in a whisper, "yes."

The redhead raised his wand while Hermione looked on in terror. "No, Ron, you can't!" Seeing that she was about to interfere, Harry twitched his wand and she was immobile. He didn't take his eyes from Ron.

"Do it now, before I regret."

"I love you Harry. Not in a gay way or anything, but- I love you. You're my brother."

"I love you too Ron."

"Avada Kedavra." It was the single hardest thing he'd ever done, summoning the rage to do it properly.

Hermione was weeping silent tears of rage, finally fighting off her body-bind to join Ron in sobbing over their friend's body.

Moments later, they both thought they'd cracked when they felt Harry moving beneath them. "You're alive," declared Hermione jubilantly as the boy cracked open an eyelid. Ron just sobbed mindlessly into his friend's shoulder.

"Yup," croaked Harry.

Ron suddenly sat up and punched Harry in the shoulder. "You son of a bitch, why did you make me do that?" Harry winced and his friends immediately pulled him into the tightest group hug he had ever encountered.

They stood up and banished the destroyed Horcruxes into the lake, suddenly remembering the presence of the zombie-like student body.

"How long until that confounding potion wears off, Hermione?"

The witch shrugged. "Ask the elves. In the meantime, how about we get everybody inside?"

"I reckon if we just get everybody drinking Firewhiskey, they'll all just think this was some kind of stupid party event and not an extremely illegal mass mind control ritual," noted Ron. He cast another sonorous and told everybody to go inside and party, an order they all took to with enthusiasm.

For their part, the trio went to the Tower and bed, and when questioned the next morning over what had happened the night before, truthfully replied that they had gone to bed at the start of the party. When asked about the scorch marks on the lawn, the Durmstrang ship on the roof and the Beauxbatons carriage in the lake, they simply shrugged.

Hermione had the brilliance to wink at the Weasley twins as they asked, after which they followed her around worshipfully; she had never been so smugly evasive in her life.