A/N: If you haven't noticed, chapters 22 and 23 are different then they had originally been. I realized looking at it that chapter 22, which is entitled Laughter, was never added. That has been fixed. Now that that's been addressed, enjoy the chapter, and don't forget to review!

Chapter 24: Scenes and Secrets

A searing pain cut across my forehead, and without so much as a by-your-leave, I was plunged into one of Voldemort's visions from Hell. Choirs of screams slammed into my auditory senses with the force of a hundred Bludgers, and after a moment the vertigo subsided enough for me see. As I surveyed the carnage around me, I could not help but wish that I was back at Warrior Way. It was sickening, to say the very least, the way that I could feel Voldemort's intensely erotic pleasure as he watched his minions torture a village of Muggle-borns to death. Left and right there were men, women, and children being Crucioed into insanity and struck down with the Killing Curse as casually as a veterinarian would put down a rabid animal. Houses were being pillaged, storefronts burned to the ground, and the hellish orange glow of the flames illuminated the Town Square where the most chilling events I have ever seen, and likely will ever see, were taking place. Standing in the middle of the destructive chaos was a man with wild hair and wilder eyes, skinning a woman alive in front of her family and howling like a wolf at the crescent moon.

Fenrir Greyback, the Boogey-man himself.

I prayed desperately for the vision to end, and looked away from the grotesque scene, only to have my eyes meet with the large, brown eyes of a small girl. She couldn't have been more than six. I thought, staring into her dull, lifeless eyes. She was an innocent. But her innocence had not saved her. No one's innocence had saved them. Much as I wished otherwise, I already knew that there would be no survivors this night. Come morning, there would be nothing left of the village but charred wood and the bloody remains of human carcasses.

It's not fair. I thought, seething with righteous fury. It wasn't enough for you to steal everything I held dear to me, was it Tom? You had to steal from them too! I pushed my thoughts to the forefront of Voldemort's mind, forcing him to hear me. You steal the life and happiness from others so that you can be happy. You take pleasure in hurting these innocent people. Enjoy it while you can. Your day will come, Tom, perhaps sooner than you think.

You think you can defeat me, Harry Potter? You dare threaten me, the greatest wizard of the age? Cold laughter echoed through my head. Very ambitious, for a mudblood. Tell me, Harry. If your parents together couldn't defeat me, what makes you think that you can do it alone?

Who says I'm alone? I answered. My parents didn't know your secret.

And you do?

Yes.

You expect me to believe that a mere child, cut off from all things magical for the first eleven years of his life, and again for every summer afterward, has learned my secret? He scoffed. If that twinkling old coot Albus Dumbledore hasn't figured it out, then you haven't either.

Don't be so certain of that, Tom. I know all about the precautions you took to insure against your death.

You know nothing!

Don't I? You should have listened to Wormtail, Tom. He told you to use someone else for the ritual.

I could feel Voldemort's outrage and confusion leaking through the bond. I was bluffing, but he didn't have to know that, now did he?

What about the ritual? There was nothing there to reveal my secrets!

Did you honestly think that I wouldn't research Necromancy rituals and put two and two together? I chided. Combined with the way you can see out of Nagini's eyes whenever you want…

You know nothing! He repeated scathingly. You are a pathetic schoolboy, with equally pathetic research and reasoning skills! You couldn't have possibly found out about them! No one knows about them other than myself! No one!

No one except you and I, you mean. I remarked, praying for him to reveal his secret.

You don't know about my Hor—

A blast sounded off to the left, causing a bit of debris to crash into Voldemort, interrupting our connection and flinging me out of his mind and back into my own. I jerked awake, swearing colorfully enough to cause even the Weasley twins to blush a fair shade of crimson.

"Harry! Harry, calm down!" Rein shouted. "Just calm down and tell us what happened."

I took a couple of somewhat calming breaths, before I described in detail what I'd just witnessed.

"And just as he was about to reveal his secret, there was an explosion! Some of the debris must have hit him, because the link was broken after that." I finished in a huff.

"Wow…" Fred breathed, everyone else nodding in agreement. "That sucks."

"No," I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm, "It's wonderful."

"Actually it is." Rein mused, causing me to turn and look at her as though she'd grown a second head. "No, think about it. You didn't even know what to look for, before. But now we know that whatever it is that's keeping him alive, it likely begins with 'H-O-R'."

"They likely begin with 'H-O-R'." I replied, massaging my aching temples. "He said 'them', which implies more than one."

"True."

I sighed. "I guess now all I have to do is figure out something that begins with 'H-O-R' and could keep a soul anchored to the living realm after it's been separated from its body."

"Easy." Fred said.

"Child's play." Said George.

I snorted. "You guys are forgetting who you're talking to. Nothing's ever simple with me."

"No," Severus drawled, "but it might not be as hard as you think. Whatever it is, it's bound to be Dark in nature, and there's a library at his house, that has plenty of books on Dark Artifacts."

"Who's house?" Rein asked.

"Sirius'."

"Your godfather's?"

"Long story short, his family was Dark and he wasn't so they disowned him. When the rest of them had died off, he inherited it by default."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I inherited it when he…" My voice trailed off as an image of Sirius falling through the veil replayed in my mind. "When he was murdered." I finished quietly.

Rein rubbed my back comfortingly. "I'm sorry."

"So am I."

xxx

A muffled thud resonated through the library as I closed yet another Dark Arts text and set it aside.

"This isn't working." I sighed, frustrated at my lack of progress. "There has to be a better way of doing this. Kreacher!"

A quiet pop accompanied his appearance. Dresses in a black butler's ensemble, Kreacher was looking more upstanding by the day.

"Kreacher," I said, shifting a pile of scrolls aside so I could see him, "is there a way to make this search go faster?"

"Kreacher does not know many wizard spells, but Kreacher did overhear the late Master Regulus using a spell to search the texts once." the elf nodded sagely. "He was saying 'conperio horcrux' over and over. Kreacher is not knowing what he was looking for."

"Thanks Kreacher, you've been a big help."

The elf bowed and disappeared.

"Maybe now I might be able to get somewhere…" I muttered, flipping open a text entitled Dark Times and Darker Arts. "Conperio horcrux."

The ancient tome opened and its pages turned rapidly, only stopping once half the pages had been turned. I scanned the page, and finding the word 'Horcruxes' highlighted, began to read.

Abolere Infernalis

The Hell Banishment Curse

Created by Cardea in 1047 AD, this curse is typically used to destroy creatures or beings that cannot be killed by any conceivable mortal means. Primarily used to execute Vampyres, Lycanthropes, Veela, Inferni, and Phoenixes (as well as to destroy artifacts that guard against mortal death, such as Horcruxes), this curse banishes the offending body into the Realm of the Dead. During Medieval times this spell was often used to inflict upon mortal men a fate worse than death.

For more on Cardea, refer to pages 394- 414 in the text Protector of Souls by Abraham Van Helsing. For more on Horcruxes, refer to the text Volta de Morte by Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin.

A/N2: Conperio is a Latin verb meaning "to find, learn, or discover". Cardea is the Roman goddess of thresholds and health, who protects small children against vampire-witches. Abraham Van Helsing is a character in Bram Stoker's Dracula, and volta de morte is Portuguese for "return from the dead".