Posted: 18 April, 2010

Disclaimer: I do not own anything in this story that is recognisable from the Harry Potter books, movies, etc. Everything else however (eg. story plot, original characters, etc.) stems from my own imagination and belongs to me. No copyright infringement is intended and I am not profiting financially from this story in any way.

Chapter 14 - Horcrux Collecting

Sunday, 9 August, 1992

Harry attached the pouch, now filled with emergency potions, to one side of his belt. Then he picked up a second pouch, also expanded within like the first, and added a bulky pair of leather motorcycle gloves to its contents, before attaching it to the other side of his belt. He looked around the hotel room in which he had been staying since leaving the Dursleys shortly after his birthday, to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. He hadn't.

An Apparition and a three minute walk later, Harry found himself standing before a house wedged tightly in amongst a thick, shadowy copse of trees. It was a dilapidated structure with crumbling, mossy-covered stone walls, missing roof tiles and grimy windows. It looked only a few steps away from collapsing in on itself.

He raised his wand and focussed. "Visumagicus," he cast, pointing it at his eyes.

The spell was one designed by Hermione during the war, to aid in their Horcrux hunting. Complex and difficult to master, it allowed one to 'see' magic. Immediately the world looked different to Harry, as though viewed through a heat haze. As he looked around, he saw magic coating the building. He recognised it as an Impenetrable Charm. Nothing was truly impenetrable of course, but this came close, so he turned his attention to the obvious weak point.

The front door was clear of the Impenetrable Charm, but there was something else there. Magic of a different sort coated the door. It reminded him of an Alert Ward, and it was connected to … the dead snake nailed to the centre? He frowned and stepped closer squinting at the snake, finally noticing the strange spell on the reptile carcass. The subtle magic reminded him of something frozen or paused. A Stasis Spell of some sort? Then he looked closer, past the Stasis Spell, and jerked back in shock and disgust.

He hadn't known animals could be made into Inferi, but the dark rotted look to the magic was familiar and recognisable to him. That snake definitely was an Inferius: an animated corpse. It was held under a Stasis Spell of some sort; a Stasis Spell connected to an Alert Ward on the door. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was going in. When someone touched the door, trying to get in, the Inferius snake was awakened to attack. No doubt it carried deadly, poisonous venom. The question was: what to do?

After considering the problem from several angles, he decided to go with the old tried and true method of dealing with Inferi: fire.

"Flamma Repello," he cast the Flame Repelling Spell on the door behind the snake, then quickly followed up with an, "Incendio," cast from a distance.

His caution proved wise when the magic of the spells awoke the rotted snake. It made mindless hissing noises, almost snake-like moans, as it writhed and twisted, straining open mouthed to reach and bite Harry, but held back by the nail in its spine.

Slowly, what little skin and flesh remained of the snake blistered and burnt away, till only magic held the skeleton together. He focussed on committing more power into the spell, and the fire turned blue then white. The snake bones were burnt to ash, and the hissing stopped. He lowered his wand, panting a little.

"Maybe I should've used a different spell. That one wasn't made to channel so much power," he said thoughtfully to himself, blinking away the spots in his vision that the light and magic both had left behind.

One last glance showed no other spells on the door, so he reached out and opened it. He stepped into a tiny combined kitchen/living room. As he stared around the squalid interior in the gloom, several items lit up to his 'sight' as being magical. Most though, were innocuous; the sort of magical odds and ends one expected to find in a wizarding dwelling.

There were two doors leading off the room. Seeing nothing of interest where he was, Harry headed to one and opened it slowly. It was a small bedroom, with two old, mouldy beds cramped within. A couple of rags that looked once to be wizard's robes littered the floor. Again, there was nothing magical of interest, so he withdrew back to the main room, and headed to the second door.

Again, he found a tiny bedroom. This one however had but one single, mouldy bed, though it was more of a pallet really. Again, some ragged clothes littered the floor, but these were dresses and female things. He knew he must be in the daughter's room, and given she was Tom's mother, suspected this to be the most likely place he would have hidden it.

His suspicious were proven correct as he spotted loose looking wall stone at about shoulder height, with a structured, latticework magical glow. He suspected the spell was a support of some sort, holding the stone in place. He prepared to cancel it before halting and first withdrawing the gloves from his equipment pouch and pulling them on. Then he raised his wand.

The magic flowed a bit sluggishly through the thick, impeding layer of leather, but flow it did. He cancelled the latticework spell and immediately the stone, or rather a shallow chunk of it, tumbled from the wall and broke apart on the floor.

Within the little nook that was revealed, his eyes caught the glint of a gold ring, glowing with dark magic, before latching onto the black stone with a familiar engraving that was inset upon it. He acted almost without thought, mind going hazy, hand reaching out to take the jewellery. In a stupor, he withdrew the ring with his left hand, then moved to don it on his right hand … only to be halted by bulky leather gloves.

The unexpected obstruction was enough of a distraction for Harry to shake off his trance. He took a gulp of air, for he had been holding his breath, and glared at the ring. It was still trying to entrance him, but now that he'd felt and conquered the spell, he knew it would not capture him again. He looked at the bulky gloves he wore with appreciation. They had worked exactly as planned. Sometimes it was the simplest solutions that were best.

Having planned ahead what to do next, he raised his wand – in a still gloved hand, as a precaution – and conjured a rat. Grabbing it before it could skitter away, he threaded the ring over its tail. There was a pause then a pain-filled squeaking, as the first the rat's tail and then slowly the rest of its body became victim to the curse upon the ring, turning black and withered.

When at last the rat was dead, he looked once more at the ring. Both the Entrancement Spell and Withering Curse had dissipated. The Peverell ring was now harmless. Or rather, as harmless as an object imbued with a fraction of the Dark Lord's soul could be.

Looking down at the stone littering the floor, he took one small pebble and transfigured it into a replica of the ring, then put in into the alcove. Next he waved his wand to repair the rest of the stone and directed it back to cover up the hole, holding it there with a Sticking Charm. Then, he banished the rodent remains.

It certainly wouldn't be enough to deceive Voldemort, but if he sent a Death Eater to check up on his ring Horcrux in his stead, it might just be enough to fool them. Now he just had to hide the ring somewhere safe till he had the means of destroying the soul within. There was a hidden, Fidelius Charmed section he'd created in his school trunk that should suit his purposes nicely.

..ooOOoo..

Tuesday, 1 September, 1992

The rest of the holiday had been much less noteworthy. Harry had a few more visits with Sirius, often with Remus present also. The two men even took him school shopping the week after his Hogwarts letter came. Unfortunately, he'd once more picked the day Lockhart was there for a book signing, and worse, forgot about it until he was dragged unwillingly into a photo with the fraud. He did notice, as he fled the scene with his school books (Remus looking sympathetic and Sirius torn between amusement and anger at 'that blonde puffball' for manhandling his godson), that there was a confrontation between the Malfoys and the Weasleys. Hopefully that meant things were going as planned.

A couple of weeks later, he returned to Hogwarts. His testing of Neville's shields on the train showed a pleasant surprise. Neville seemed to have reached a new understanding of Occlumency, and his shields were improving in leaps and bounds. He may just be able to come clean rather sooner than expected. He congratulated Neville on his progress, making sure his admiration was clear in his tone, and the other boy seemed to fill with pleased pride.

It was now late at night, after the welcoming feast, during which he awkwardly tried to ignore the blushing, fawning, gawking looks little Ginny Weasley was throwing his way. She was such a fangirl. She'd probably go into paroxysms of joy to know that Harry planned to sneak into her bedroom tonight. He grimaced at the thought.

Once he was sure everyone was asleep, he eased out of his bed and circled the room, quietly pulling back bed curtains to cast Sleeping Spells on his dorm mates, to ensure they wouldn't awake at an inopportune time. Then, he cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself and headed over to the window, easing it open, and climbed so that he was straddling the sill.

"Right," he said, giving the long fall below a concerned look, "focus self, because we don't want this spell failing halfway through." He pointed his wand at himself once more. "Pennalevis." Then he pointed it at each hand, knee and foot in turn, intoning, "Inhaero."

Now Feather-Light, he reached his right hand out to flatten against the stone on the outer wall of the castle. Then he pressed his right knee and foot against the wall some distance below it. His free hand grasped the upper window sill, and finally, he eased his left leg out the window and then pressed against the wall below the sill. The Inhaero, better know as the Sticking Charm, was working perfectly, adhering him to the wall. Unable to help himself, he took a look down.

"Oh crap," he muttered, and turned back to the wall. "Heights are so not as fun when you're not flying. Just keep moving. Just keep moving. This would have been so much easier if I had a broom. Just keep moving."

Gulping, he pulled his right hand free of the wall, and attached it again further along. Right leg, then left hand and leg followed, before the process repeated. Before he knew it he was crawling like a spider across the outside of Gryffindor tower. He slowly but determinedly made his way down and across the mini-turret of the boys' dorm, then across the broader stone wall of the Gryffindor tower proper, before making his way up the mini-turret that was the girls' dorm. He climbed till he reached one of the windows second from the top.

Using his wand – which had remained stuck beneath his right hand – he cast a Silencing Spell on the window in case the hinges squeaked, and eased it slowly open, climbing into the first year girl's dormitory. Once in the room, he cancelled all the spells on himself but the Disillusionment Charm, and sneaked around each bed, using Sleeping Spells as he had on his own year mates to ensure they wouldn't awake.

Once he was done, he found went to the foot of Ginny Weasley's bed and opened the lid of an old trunk that looked second hand at best. After five fruitless minutes searching he managed to locate a disturbing collection of boy-who-lived paraphernalia, including: a children's story book, a newspaper clipping of his photo with Lockhart, a worn looking Harry Potter doll, complete with flashing lightning bolt scar, and a foot long parchment scroll with every combination of Ginny Molly Wesley and Harry James Potter conceivable, surrounded by pink sparkling hearts. Disappointed at not finding what he'd hoped for, and disturbed by what he had, he closed the trunk and tried to think.

"Now, if I was an eleven year old girl with a secret diary, where would I hide it?" he wondered before being hit with a brainwave. "No. It couldn't be that simple."

Carefully so as not to disturb the sleeping redhead, he stuffed his hand in the space between the bed and mattress and reached it around. Hitting something solid, he pulled it back. Shabby black cover with 'Vauxhall Road, London' printed on the back, and on the first page – he flipped it open – yes, 'T.M. Riddle' written in smudged ink. It was the diary Horcrux.

Satisfied to have found what he was looking for, he headed back to the window. Several minutes later he had returned to his own dormitory the way he came, and was ensconced in his bed, Riddle's diary having joined the Peverell Ring in the Fidelius Charmed compartment in his trunk.

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