Surprise!

by FirePhoenix86

Now that Harry is free, he gets another Bombshell revelation about his past that was kept from him, and apparently everyone else as well. Can he finally live his life the way he's always wanted? Parents, his Godfather, and a real family? J/L, HP/GW

66. Honorable Disownment for RAB

Author's Note/Warning: This chapter contains drug use, very briefly at the beginning of the chapter.

Disclaimer: Quotes included in this chapter are bolded and found in the Half-Blood Prince. No copy right infringement is intended. Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and she graciously allows us to play here.

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Chapter 66

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Harry situated himself in the backyard patio. They had not known about the patio until Sirius arrived, since the door leading to the patio had been hidden by a spell when the house was being used as Headquarters. This was done to prevent anyone using more than the one door to enter and exit the building. The area outside was still covered by the Fidelius charm, however, the problem with using the patio was the Muggles on either side would eventually start to hear the hidden voices carry through the air. Harry fixed that one small problem my casting a Muffliato charm around the area.

The grass and small flower garden were overgrown and looked quite scraggily, but a few quick cleaning charms on the furniture and one well-placed vanishing charm on the weeds later the brick patio was clear for human use.

"You know, this would be a lot of fun to have a cookout out here sometime. Get a charcoal grill and a picnic table, maybe a porch swing…It would be a blast!" James said. Sirius grinned and nodded, eyes roving the area mapping out where to put things.

"We could put a gazebo out here and I could use the quiet area to study," Lily added.

"You think it's big enough for a gazebo?" asked James.

"Maybe a small one," she said. "We could get a toddler-sized swimming pool for the summer for Teddy to play in also."

As everyone else got situated around the table Kreacher arrived and passed out drinks to everyone and set a final platter of snacks on the table at Lily's request.

"Okay, so I'll start with—" Harry began, but James interrupted.

"Harry, before at the Weasley's house you said you smoked the stuff you found in Dudley's room summer after fifth year. Ganja or whatever it was called. What was that about?" he said. Harry had a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look on his face as Lily turned to him.

"You what?" she asked shrilly.

"What's 'ganja'?" Ron asked Hermione quietly. She gave Harry an apologetic, questioning look and he sighed and nodded his head.

"It's a Muggle drug, also called weed, marijuana, dope…People use it to get high and…well I'm not really sure why people use it other than that," she said softly. Harry had his head down, eyes looking into his lap when she finished. He could feel everyone's eyes on him after she'd said the word 'drug'.

There was a pregnant pause before Lily asked, "Harry…why?"

Harry took a deep breath. This isn't as bad as the Unforgivable Curses and I told them about casting those, he told himself. "When I got back to the Dursleys that summer I was severely depressed. There were definitely a few times I considered just leaving, hopping a plane in my Cloak and disappearing. I never thought of suicide," he added hastily after seeing some of the looks facing him. "I knew that wasn't something Sirius or my parents wouldn't want, but knowing that I was the only one who could take out Voldemort scared me worse than anything.

"Eventually though, the idea of leaving became this indescribable dream. It was all I could think of for about a week. I even packed my trunk once and called the airport to find the time of the next flight to Australia," he said sadly. Hermione, Ron, and Ginny were watching him with vulnerable expressions. He knew that admitting he had planned on leaving them behind hurt them, but they had to understand what he went through that summer all by himself.

"I was ready to leave in the morning. But that night…I had one of the worst nightmares in my whole life. All it was…it was just you three, Neville, and Luna staring at me as I boarded the plane. You all went from having these sad expressions one moment, then it changed and you all looked at me like you hated me. You started yelling at me, calling me a coward and saying stuff about loving me and that now you hated me. I woke up crying – well that summer it wasn't exactly unheard of for me to cry like that – but after I fell back to sleep I had another nightmare: Voldemort killing all five of you for refusing to tell him where I was, even though you all hated me for leaving. He tortured you, killed each of you in horrible ways. When I woke up I realized that if I left…I was condemning you all to death and I couldn't take the idea that you all would hate me. Instead of going back to sleep, I got up and unpacked my trunk." Harry took a sip of his drink and heaved a sigh.

"I think it would just be easier if I showed you all the memory of the night I found the drugs," Harry lifted a few silvery strands of memory out of his temple and placed them in the freshly emptied bowl. They all entered without speaking to find the younger Harry in a huge, filthy room.

There was a path from the door to the bed, to the desk, and to the closet, otherwise the floor wasn't visible. Plates and bowls half filled with old food were scattered around the room and wispy spider webs could be found in every corner and crevice of the room. Flies hovered around piles of clothes and dirty dishes. Band posters, several of which were ripped, hung about the walls, and on the desk, hidden under piles of magazines and movie boxes was a top of the line computer with many attachments for gaming. A large television sat in the corner, but it had a chunk taken off the corner of the frame, several gaming units like a PlayStation and Nintendo were hooked up, the controllers crossing the pile of junk to sit on the floor near the bed.

"Ugh…And I thought Ron's room was bad," Ginny said with her lip turned up in disgust.

"Hey! My room isn't that bad," Ron complained.

"Sh," said a few people.

Harry had turned on the radio next to the bed and was listening to some quiet music while he worked. He pulled the piles of clothes apart and separated them into coloured, whites and blacks. The whole time he worked methodically and stiffly, as if the motions were learned from years of practice. He didn't need to pay attention because he could sort clothes in his sleep.

The memory flashed and the room seemed a bit cleaner. All the clothes were gone, or folded and waiting for the piles near the closet to be sorted. Harry was currently wiping down the walls and getting rid of the cobwebs.

There was another flash and finally the floor was visible. All the dishes were piled in a box by the door, the computer was visible and papers, magazines and movies stacked nearby.

Another flash and the floor was vacuumed, widows washed, and furniture dusted. Harry was pulling the grey, stained sheets off the bed and throwing them across the room to the door, trying to touch them as little as possible. He remembered the sounds he'd hear at night, frantic breathing and grunting and a final moan before the wall shaking snores. A house elf wouldn't even want to touch those sheets.

Harry lifted the mattress to place the new sheets and found a porn magazine, a small cylindrical metal container, a lighter, a baggie, and colourful looking tube with a bowl shape on the end. A couple pictures of naked girls caught Harry's attention for a few moments, to James, Sirius, Ron, and George's amusement. The girls were not quite as amused, Ginny slapping Harry in the back of the head.

"Hey! It's not like I was looking this time!" he exclaimed. "I was young and single, what do you expect…at least I didn't take them with me when I left," Harry mumbled.

Soon enough the memory Harry shuddered and set the photos back down when he came across the one of a naked Dudley with a blonde girl that looked like a naked, hairless monkey. Harry picked up the baggie and sniffed the contents, grimacing at the smell. He picked up the pipe and studied it. The metal container was opened to find a ground up substance inside.

Harry looked at the door and paused the song on the radio to listen. They all could hear Petunia talking on the phone about some gardening exhibition she wanted to go to. Harry stood up, pressed play on the radio, and grabbed the baggie, the metal container, lighter, and the pipe and lightly tiptoed down the hallway to his room, where he placed the stuff under the floor board under his bed. He returned to the room and finished cleaning.

The memory flashed to Harry sitting in his bedroom with the window open. He had already prepared the pipe and had the lighter in hand. His eyes were red and watery and looked like he had been partaking for a while by that point. They all heard the door open downstairs and Dudley say hello to his parents before walking up stairs. Harry looked panicked. He hastily put out the pipe and threw everything into a desk drawer while he waved his arms about crazily to dissipate the smoky smell near the window. They heard Dudley swear through the walls, rustle around for a minute, and then stomp back downstairs.

"Mum, did you clean my room today?" he asked loudly.

"No. I told him too. It was getting bad and I was getting tired of running out of spoons. I knew that you were taking food upstairs so I made the boy clean it today," she said. "Why is something missing? Did that rotten boy steal something from you?" she asked quickly. Everyone saw Harry roll his eyes.

"No…I just wondered who cleaned it. Thanks for making him do it mummy," Dudley said sweetly.

"You're welcome Dudley-dear," she replied happily. They could hear the sounds of heavy footsteps coming slowly up the stairs. Harry, they could see, was panicking something awful by this point. The drugs making the whole situation seem much more intense. At one point he opened his closet and attempted to climb in and shut the door, but he'd finally grown too tall for that. He even bent down to look under the bed, gauging the amount of space relative to his body and realized even if he could squish his body under, his head was too round and would never fit. Finally, he sat down the bed, laid back and closed his eyes, pretending to sleep.

The older Harry snorted. "I don't know what I was thinking. Like that would have stopped him," he muttered.

The door to Harry's room was slowly pushed open as far as it would go. Dudley's form filled the bottom two-thirds of the doorway, blocking the hall light, and turning him into a backlit, hulking silhouette. He stepped into the room slowly and turned to shut the door. The click was almost deafening to Harry's fake-sleeping ears. Hermione could see his smaller form shaking slightly. If she hadn't known better it almost looked like he was cold.

"You always were the worst fake sleeper I'd ever seen," Dudley said softly. Harry knew he couldn't pretend anymore and it was probably a better plan to be standing and able to fight back, so he quickly jumped up from the bed and stood in front of the window. He brandished his wand like a sword in front of him. Dudley flinched slightly but didn't move otherwise.

"You touch me, and I won't hesitate to use this," he said just as quietly as Dudley had spoken.

Dudley rolled his eyes. "Look, cousin, I don't care what you think, or…" Dudley paused as he looked at Harry. "You smoked some didn't you?" he finally said in shock. "I can see it in your eyes. It smells like it in here too!"

"If you tell your parents I'll just tell them where I found it…right next to the nudey mags and pictures of you with various girls," Harry said quickly.

"Psh, like you would have the guts…or they'd believe you. Just give it back, Pot-head, and no one need find out," Dudley said, arms crossed.

"You…you aren't going to tattle? Why not?" asked Harry as he lowered his wand in confusion.

"It's not obvious? One; if I do tell my parents, who will obviously take my side, they will still get rid of it. Two, that's a lot of dope right there…it's not all mine. If I lose it, I have to pay back a lot of people. Three, this is great blackmail to have on you. You're gonna be my bitch from now on," Dudley ended flatly. Even Ron could tell that there was something missing from the threat. Like Harry and sorting the clothes, it was simply routine with no real threat behind the words anymore.

The younger Harry rolled his eyes and pulled all the stuff out of the desk and tossed it one by one to Dudley.

"How much you smoke?" he asked.

"I don't know. One pipe full?" said Harry with a shrug.

"Fine, you owe me now," Dudley said as he stepped over to the door.

"Yeah right," Harry huffed. "Let's just say washing those nasty sheets of yours is payment enough," Harry said with derision. Dudley surprised Harry by letting out a loud laugh.

"Fine, we're even. You ever want another hit, come to me. I'll get you what you need. But remember, first hit is free, anything after you have to pay," Dudley offered as he opened the door and stepped out. The memory faded and everyone was expelled back onto the patio.

"The next few weeks," Harry began. "I switched between mindlessly wandering the neighbourhood, knowing that there were people following me and not caring, and being so angry at the world, Dumbledore, Sirius, my parents, even you guys," he looked at Ron and Hermione. "I was furious that I had to be the one to save everyone, that I had no choice in the matter. I had no idea how I was going to accomplish that and it seemed like there was no way that I, a pathetic little boy with barely any training, could vanquish the most powerful dark wizard in a several decades. I spent the day either doing the occasional chores my relatives gave me, or sitting in my room brooding. Luckily, Voldemort wasn't sending me visions or letting me view him torturing people so that's one positive thing that happened, but it meant nothing really considering that I still spent my nights having nightmares constantly anyway.

"About a week before I was brought to the Burrow I got a letter. It was from this old man named Jack. He was pretty old and would wake up at night and not be able to get back to sleep so he apparently pondered things. The letter said that one night he was thinking about me and how he knew the Ministry had been pressuring the Prophet and that he and his wife had believed me and Dumbledore all along. Then he said that I should remember something, 'Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.' I remember that so well because it was exactly how I was feeling. I kept wondering how I could have been placed in Gryffindor when I was so afraid of that Prophecy and what it meant.

"He ended the letter saying that 'at the end of the day good will prevail. If it needs war or revolution, it's up to the people to earn their freedom back.' A couple days later I got Dumbledore's letter saying he was coming to get me. I never did smoke anything again after that. I didn't really enjoy the feeling it gave me, plus it tasted like licking a skunk's rear end," Harry finished with a disgusted look on his face to everyone's amusement.

"Did you ever respond to Jack?" asked Lily.

"Well, I spent the next couple days thinking about that letter and how it couldn't have come at a more perfect time. I sent back a letter thanking him for his advice and how much it helped me. The day before I left Privet Drive, Hedwig returned with a letter from Jack's wife saying that Jack had died, probably soon after sending his letter to me. She said it was old age and he had been slowly withering away for a month at that point, but she was glad her husband had been able to help someone one more time before he passed on. I didn't tell anyone about her or Jack until I told Ginny at the end of our sixth year, but I kept up correspondence with Julia for about six months. Finally, shortly before Christmas a letter arrived saying Julia had passed on in the night. Their daughter thanked me for giving her mum someone to think about after her father died and if I wanted to keep any of the letters I'd sent, she'd send them to me. I have them all in my trunk upstairs," Harry finished quietly.

Hermione made a small, sympathetic noise in her throat and gave Harry a compassionate smile while Ginny patted Harry's hand gently. No one spoke for a moment, allowing Harry a moment of peace.

He had forgotten the notes Hermione had written inside, and didn't feel like going to get them or bothering Kreacher to do it. He lived it, so he was sure he could remember it well enough.

The next thing he could think of sharing was Dumbledore's visit. He smiled. He may be at odds with the man now, but seeing Dumbledore ream out the Dursleys still brought a smile to his face. So he spent the next several minutes talking about how Dumbledore floated the glasses of mead to the Dursleys and how they continued to lightly bounce off the Muggles' heads until finally Vernon blew up and demanded he take the blasted tumblers back. Everyone laughed at how Dumbledore simply called the Dursleys rude for not taking refreshments when they were offered.

Lily laughed when Harry said Petunia nearly fainted when Kreacher showed up. Harry put the memory of Dumbledore reaming out the Dursleys into the Pensieve but instead of everyone jumping in he tapped it with his wand and made the memory float above the bowl like Dumbledore had for the prophecy after Sirius' 'death'. Everyone laughed at the comment about Dudley and agreed that Dumbledore was the master of understatement.

The memory ended when Harry and Dumbledore walked out the door. He continued on to explain where they were going and why for several minutes. When Harry explained how Slughorn had been squatting at random Muggle houses for a while, Lily became upset.

"That poor man! I'll have to go see him soon, or invite him for tea someday," she exclaimed. Harry had fun telling them how Slughorn had trashed the house in less than two minutes and George had a moment where he laughed uncontrollably at how Dumbledore 'discovered' Slughorn disguised as the armchair.

Harry, Ron, and Ginny spent several minutes raving about the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes shop that opened that summer. Harry shared the U-No-Poo sign he remembered fondly and James and Sirius nearly fell out of their seats from laughing so hard. George just sat there blushing at all the praise.

Harry spent a couple minutes explaining his theory about Draco Malfoy becoming a Death Eater that summer to replace his father, who'd been arrested after the Department of Mysteries fiasco. He reluctantly admitted how he'd been caught spying by Malfoy and how the blonde boy had gotten the better of him on the train to school.

Harry told them of the Half-Blood Prince's potions books he'd had to use for a while and how he switched the covers with his new book in order to keep the Prince's notes. Hermione chimed in on how she'd told him not to use the instructions because he didn't know who'd written them but she half-heartedly admitted to being jealous of the Prince's skill in potions also.

Snape becoming Defence of the Dark Arts teacher for the year and how he'd run his classes compared to previous teachers was a quick topic. This somehow led into Harry's lessons with Albus. Harry pulled a long dark wooden box from his pocket. Inside were the vials of memory Dumbledore had shown him. After the war was over, Dumbledore had instructed Minerva from his portrait to give them to Harry. He poured one into the Pensieve and explained.

"These are the memories Dumbledore collected from various sources. They all contain valuable information about Voldemort. My lessons with Dumbledore were basically these. He'd show me a memory or two and then we'd discuss at length how this was of use to us. I learned a lot about Tom Riddle during these lessons, but I'll tell you about our discussions after I show you all these memories," he said. They all joined up inside the memory on the country lane that led to the Gaunt's shack.

An hour later they were grouped around the table once more. All the memories had been shared, including the tampered memory from Slughorn and the original one Harry had collected eventually.

George raised his hand slowly and waited until Harry told him to speak.

"Does anyone else feel like they should be taking notes and keeping track of what they're learning, or is it just me?" he asked which caused nodding of heads and laughter.

They all quieted and Harry started to list everything they had learned in the memories. At one point Hermione, seeing the confusion on several people's faces, conjured a white board and some markers and was listing everything Harry said.

"Okay, so this is what we know," Percy said as he read off the board. "Riddle was obsessed with his parents and heritage from a young age; he collected trophies after large bouts of magic, usually something that resulted in pain or terror of someone weaker than he; he was very strong magically; very manipulative with a charming attitude when he wanted; cherished Hogwarts as his one true home; felt entitled to do what he wanted despite rules and legalities; was Slytherin's heir through his mother; murdered his Muggle grandparents and father, plus Hepzibah Smith and was able to successfully put the blame on innocent people for those murders; asked about something called a Horcrux; and believes that the number seven is highly magical," Percy rattled off.

"Anything else?" asked Harry.

"Well, knowing Slughorn as I do and after seeing his memories," Lily began. "He wasn't too worried about telling Riddle about whatever a Horcrux was when he was telling him, probably because he trusted Tom. But years later the man was in hiding and terrified of admitting to anyone, even Dumbledore, that the idea of Horcruxes were probably helped along by him," Lily finished.

"Ha!" Sirius scoffed. "Slughorn was probably more worried about what everyone would think about him should they find out he was the one who told Voldemort how to become immortal."

Everyone looked at Sirius.

"Sirius, did you know what a Horcrux was before Slughorn's memory?" asked Hermione.

"Have you not met my mother's portrait?" he asked in rebuttal. Hermione simply raised her eyebrows and nodded. "Though my exact memory of that lesson is a bit foggy, I know the general idea of how they work. Basically, you murder someone and that act splits off a chunk of your soul. That small chunk is then encased in a separate container, which is then placed somewhere safe with, I'm guessing, many protections around it. Should the person's body die, the portion of soul in the body is anchored to that small portion in a tea cup or some other nonse…" Sirius trailed off. Harry smirked at Hermione and Ron.

"The trophies…They were…and seven? What was…how could…." Sirius rambled on in broken sentences for a few minutes staring at nothing, eyes wide and hands clenched in his hair. Finally he broke off and looked at Harry.

"Back with us again?" Harry asked with a smile. Sirius nodded.

"Okay, then. As Sirius was saying, when a person who has made a Horcrux dies, their soul is anchored to the small portion left behind in some sort of object. From what we've figured out, when Voldemort tried to kill me, mum's sacrifice created a shell of protection around me that caused the Killing Curse to rebound onto Voldemort. But because he had made a Horcrux by that point, his soul couldn't die. His body did, but his soul was left behind to…haunt or something like that.

"At some point, after Wormtail joined him after my third year, he somehow created a small body of his own. You'll remember if was like a red scaly baby. In my fourth year when he kidnapped me after the Triwizard Tournament, he and Wormtail did a ritual to build a new, better body to house that disembodied soul that had lingered for about 13 years. Bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the foe and, voila, a brand spanking new body," Harry spat.

"But that ritual didn't use any type of object other than the cauldron and the knife, right? I mean we watched the whole thing and there was no object," Bill said slowly.

"Well, he didn't have to use one of his Horcruxes," Hermione said. "He'd already had a body housing the main part of his soul again. They just needed to build a better body. He couldn't keep living off of snake venom and unicorn blood."

"Did you say 'Horcruxes', as in more than one," asked James, looking horrified. Hermione's eyes widened and she slapped a hand over her mouth.

"Merlin's toenails! He made seven didn't he!" asked Bill loudly. Harry and Ron shared a look.

"Actually," Harry started. "The exact number he planned was six Horcruxes, with the seventh piece in his body. Seven parts is more magical."

Molly raised her hand at that point. Harry, smiling, pointed to her.

"So, going with what the memories showed us then the Ring, the locket, and the Cup were all turned into Horcruxes?" she asked.

"Yep," Harry said nodding. "Hermione, why don't we just list them on this board, okay?" he asked. She stood up and opened her marker.

"Should we go with the order in which they were made?" she asked. She gave him a significant look and he shook his head.

She turned and started writing.

"We're not one hundred per cent sure which was created first but this is our best guess. The first one was created while he was in Hogwarts, that we do know for sure. He was wearing the ring in Slughorn's memory so we know that he had murdered his dad and grandparents by that point. We're guessing that he turned the ring first," she said as she wrote on the board.

"Next we believe was a diary he'd written in while he was in school. He described how to enter the Chamber of Secrets in the diary with the intention of using someone else to open the Chamber using his memories. Therefore it was highly important to him. He placed spells on it so that his Horcrux could eventually take over whoever wrote in the diary and use them to open the Chamber. We saw this diary in Ginny's first year, our second year. Harry destroyed this one," she said as she made a large 'X' next to the word 'Diary'.

"Shortly after graduating he was able to obtain Hufflepuff's Cup and Slytherin's Locket, so those were numbers three and four, which order isn't known though," Harry said.

"After that was a long gap in time. We aren't sure when he found Ravenclaw's Diadem but we do know he travelled to Albania during that long gap in time, and that's where it was rumoured to last been seen," Ron said.

"So that's five he had created by the time Harry was born. He heard part of the Prophecy and knew that his 'downfall' was possible with this kid born at the end of July. So he set out to destroy Harry. He figured making his sixth and last Horcrux with Harry's death would make it all the more powerful. With Harry's death he really would be all powerful and 'officially' unstoppable," Hermione said. She looked at Harry and he shook his head ever so slightly. He didn't want to explain the whole Harry-Horcrux thing at the moment.

"Well, we all know what happened that night. So, we'll move on to the next Horcrux. Voldemort knew he needed one more Horcrux to be finished, so he turned Nagini, his snake, into one after the disaster in the graveyard in nineteen ninety five. He finally had seven pieces of soul spread out, or so he thought," Hermione said ominously. Harry tightened his lips, thinking she was going to tell them about his anyway, but he was wrong.

"The diary was already destroyed," Ginny said softly. Everyone turned to her and she blushed.

"Correct," Hermione said with a sympathetic smile. "If Voldemort had known about the Diary being destroyed, he would probably have made another one." Hermione wrote Nagini and Voldemort on the board, but left a small gap before Nagini that no one questioned.

Everyone stared at the board for a short while.

"So…that's what Dumbledore left for you guys to do by yourselves isn't it? Why you three had to be alone for ten months and couldn't tell anyone?" Arthur asked. After Harry nodded his head Arthur continued. "But why are you telling us now? I mean, not that I don't appreciate the truth, but I thought Harry had said that you couldn't share much of the details for safety reasons."

"Well," Harry begun. "At first I didn't think it was right to tell about the Horcruxes because Dumbledore asked me not to tell. But I really don't care about his opinion right now. Besides, his reasoning is that if the details got out we'd be at risk of other Dark Wizards doing the same thing. But I don't think anyone here is going to go Dark ever, so I really don't think we have anything to worry about there."

"Besides, any Dark Arts book that does mention a Horcrux, is usually saying that they won't speak of them. So splitting your soul is a line most dark wizards don't even think is worth crossing," Ron added.

"But I also realized something else. If I was telling my parents about my life, I had to include these details. They were a big reason why the war ended when it did and how. Then I realized that if I was telling my parents, it wasn't fair to leave you guys out. You all had to live through the three of us missing for ten months and not knowing where we were or why we left. Not telling you was incredibly unfair. So, that's why we're telling you now," Harry said.

They spent a moment in contemplative silence then Harry continued.

"So I should continue on with my sixth year now. We'll come back to the Horcruxes later," he said. "For the most part sixth year was relatively tame compared to the previous years. I spent quite a bit of time following Malfoy on the Map, or trying to follow him around the school, and dealing with Dumbledore's lessons. I was Quidditch Captain that year so I had plenty to work on in that area, plus the Half-Blood Prince's book was a pretty big focus of my attention.

"For a while I was busy dodging Slughorn to avoid going to his Slug-Club parties," Harry said sharing a grimace with Ron.

"Oh but his parties were grand, why would you want to skip them?" asked Lily.

Harry, with a surprised look, stammered, "Oh, well…I um, I…" for a moment before Lily sprouted a sneaky grin across her face.

"Just kidding," she said. Harry shook his head in mock exasperation.

"The only one of those parties I remotely enjoyed was the Christmas party. I ended up taking Luna with me and she spent the night talking about how Scrimgeour was a vampire. Actually, we met a real vampire that night. Remember Hermione?" he asked.

"Yes, Eldred Worple's friend Sanguini," she replied immediately.

"Dumbledore actually allowed a vampire in his school? Doesn't seem like him," James said.

"Yes, well he also allowed Dementors to hang out for a year…" Harry muttered. "Anyway, back to Luna. When she heard I wanted to be an Auror she told me I shouldn't because they're part of the Rotfang Conspiracy, trying to bring down the Ministry from the inside by method of Dark Magic and…" Harry snorted. "And gum disease. I about died from snorting mulled mead up my nose when I heard that." Everyone shared a good laugh over the Rotfang story.

After that, Harry shared the story of how he had to get the new memory from Slughorn and how one night he tried a gulp of some Liquid Luck he'd won in a Potions contest during the first class. He slipped the memory into the bowl and everyone eagerly jumped up.

Twenty minutes later they all returned. Lily had a few tears coming down her cheeks.

"I know you had to get that memory from him, but using my death doesn't seem all that fair," she said.

"I figured you'd enjoy the giant dead spider, mum," Harry said with a smirk. She lightly slapped his arm and rolled her eyes.

"It's too bad that potion is only useful every once in a while. Think of how much better the war would have gone if all the Aurors and fighters could have a sip of that before a fight," said James.

"Yeah, but if that potion were so readily available, don't you think the Death Eaters would have used it also? And that would just negate the usefulness of it all together," Sirius said. They all sat for a while and imagined what a Felix Felicis assisted war would be like.

Eventually Harry cleared his throat and everyone returned their attention to reality.

"The next thing I'm going to talk about, I'm not exactly proud of, but…the way I see it, everyone makes mistakes eventually in their lives. Some mistakes are worse than others, but knowing what some of my mistakes have been in the past, this one is fairly tame. All year Hermione had been telling me that my mysterious potions book couldn't be trusted. The person who wrote those notes could have written something evil and dark in there and I'd never know. Well, I went almost a full year before anything of the sort happened," Harry began.

"Wait, Harry, tell them about testing some of the other spells we found in it," Ron said grinning.

Harry decided this memory was worth seeing; sometimes good memories had to be shared also. Ron and Harry were laughing loudly as Harry put the silver strand in the bowl, so the group entered the memory with hesitant smiles on their faces.

The first thing they saw was, of the five beds, Harry's was the only one with a conscious occupant. Harry was sitting up in bed, blankets pulled up to his waist, his pyjama shirt unbuttoned, and hair much more helter-skelter than usual. He slowly flipped pages and would occasionally turn the book on its side, or upside down to read words written in all directions.

Eventually he sat up straighter and turned the book sideways. Slowly, he set the book down and stared off into the distance for a moment, then reached for his wand a couple feet away. He waved his wand in a general direction away from himself, which everyone could see was more or less aimed directly at Ron's bed, and waved his wand.

"Aaaaaaaargh!" screamed Ron.

Pandemonium reigned for several fast paced moments as Dean, Seamus, Harry, and Neville all either fell or leaped from their beds, Neville getting caught in the curtains and crashing painfully into the floor. Then the laughter came. All fourteen memory-goers, plus Dean and Seamus laughed uncontrollably, holding each other up, some squatting down to hug their knees, and Ron was on his elbows and knees with his forehead on the ground laughing so hard not even a squeak escaped.

"Sorry!" Harry yelped as he scrambled to find the right page in the book. Finally, he waved his wand and a light flashed and Ron was back on the bed, tangled in his sheets.

"Tomorrow I'd rather you set the alarm clock," Ron said from beneath his comforter. This brought on another bout of laughing as the group was spit back out of the memory.

"Oh Merlin…did you see my face?" Ron kept asking people as they all giggled and spoke at the same time.

"Your face? Did you see Harry's? He looked like he'd walked in on Snape in the shower singing Celestina Warbeck songs," George guffawed. This comment made Harry's face turn red, not from embarrassment, but from laughing too hard to breathe.

Eventually, everyone calmed down enough to continue. Harry spoke about following Malfoy around the school for weeks. Following his dot on the Map and seeing him disappear for hours on end and trying to get into the Room of Requirement when he finally figured out where the blonde was going. Finally, he talked about following him into the girls' bathroom where he found the blonde boy crying and confessing to Myrtle.

"When he looked up he saw me watching him in the mirror. He didn't hesitate to spin around and immediately start trying to hex and curse me. I, naturally, went to defend myself, but when he tried to cast the Cruciatus at me, I decided to fight a little harder. A spell I'd read about in the potions book came to mind. It had been labelled 'for enemies' and Malfoy could definitely be considered an enemy at that point, so I used it. I shouted Sectumsempra and watched as several slashes opened up on Malfoy's face and body and blood started pouring out," Harry said flatly. Everyone was staring at him in surprise. Ron and Hermione, who knew about it, were even surprised at how violent Harry made it sound. George lifted a hand to his missing ear, his eyes wide.

"I had no idea that was what was supposed to happen. Snape showed up only a moment after that, and started casting some sort of counter-spell. The gashes slowly but surely closed up and were knit back together. Snape actually carried Malfoy up to the hospital wing instead of conjuring a stretcher. Ten minutes later he returned and asked me where I'd learned that spell. I tried to lie and say it was written in a library book, but he knew…he knew I was lying because Snape was the Half-Blood Prince. He was the one who made that spell, wrote it in that book, and he knew…he knew that the only way I could have discovered that spell was by seeing his old book. And he used Legilimency on me. So he made me go get my book bag, but I made a side trip. I took Ron's Potions book and put it in my bag.

"Then I stopped at the Room of Requirement and asked for a place to hide my book. When I opened the door the room inside was huge, like the size of a cathedral or several Quidditch pitches. There was a lot of stuff in that room, the piles reached to the ceiling. There were paths throughout the room, like alleyways through junk. It was the room where every student, almost as if from the first year the school was around, had dropped their broken toys, forbidden objects, furniture that had been broken, stuff that they'd stolen, stuff they'd smuggled into the school and didn't want confiscated. Anything you could imagine was in that room.

"I ran down a path until I found a pile that looked memorable enough. It had a cage with a skeleton of something that had five legs. I shoved the book behind the cage, placed the bust of an ugly warlock on top, and then placed a dusty wig and a tiara on top of the bust's head and then ran back down to the bathroom where Snape was waiting for me.

"He looked through my book bag but Ron's book had his…name in his potions book." Harry grinned. "Isn't that right 'Roonil Wazlib'?" he asked Ron who blushed as all his brothers laughed at him.

"Anyway, I ended up getting detention every Saturday for the rest of term, and that book is probably still in the Room's…well was in the Room's hide-away room. I missed the last Quidditch match of the year and my detention was to sort through Filch's previous years detention files, mainly from the years 1971 to 1978…" Harry trailed off.

"You're detention was to sort through a box with files detailing other students detentions?" asked Percy.

"Not just anyone's detentions…" George said.

"Our detentions," James and Sirius replied together with similar grins.

"Yep. Remember what your very first detention was for?" Harry asked innocently.

James and Sirius looked at each other for a few minutes.

"Was it the time we flooded the third floor Charms study with slug slime?"

"No…that was second year. The time we tricked Micky Simmons into eating a hundred marshmallows and his stomach almost exploded."

"No idiot, that wasn't Micky Simmons, it was Peter, and that was around Easter break first year. We had plenty of detentions under our belt by then. What about when we tricked Peeves into eating Hagrid's treacle fudge and his retaliation was to dump balloons filled with mud all over the Great Hall?"

"We weren't given detention for that. We were just sternly scolded. How about when we started that food fight with Ravenclaw?"

"That could be it…" Sirius said when Harry shook his head. "But it's not. OH! When we changed Minerva's dinner plate into a cat bowl and changed her dinner into Kitten Kibble!"

"Nope," Harry replied. "I didn't actually see that one in the file," he added with a chuckle.

"Convinced Peter into letting us cast that spell on him that made him sing whatever he wanted to say?"

"No. Changed the Slytherin table into a bunch of black sheep?" asked Sirius.

"Don't think so. What about when we held an anonymous student-wide vote over who was worse, Snape or Professor Glenda," replied James.

"That was you guys?" asked Lily in surprise. "Severus was so upset by that!"

"Yeah because he lost to a one armed, one legged, one eyed, bald headed, Russian woman who wore floral muumuus and sang opera," Sirius said loudly waving his arms around. Lily snorted with derision and crossed her arms as everyone else laughed at the description of the teacher.

"She was probably the worst Defence teacher until that wanker Lockhart. Actually, she makes Lockhart look like a freaking genius in comparison," Sirius said waving his arms around.

"Moving on, both of you are wrong. The first detention you got was because the two of you cast spells in the Great Hall two weeks into your first year. You actually fought over who got the last pork chop at dinner and you both tried to hex the other one. Sirius ended up with a single horn coming out his forehead and foot long eyelashes, and dad ended up with inside out eyelids and ringlet style nose-hairs," Harry said quickly before everyone burst into laughter once more.

While everyone was laughing no one noticed Ron adding a memory to the bowl.

Harry spent the next few minutes going over small details, like the visit from the Minister over Christmas break that year, the attack on Katie Bell, and having to deal with Won-Won and Lav-Lav's romance. This brought about much teasing for Ron. Harry even described the sweetheart necklace Lavender had sent the red-headed teen for Christmas that year.

Ron simply sat by idly, blushing like mad but not defending himself, or more tellingly not trying to out-embarrass Harry. Harry did not notice this, but Ginny did. She watched Ron closely but he didn't do anything she could accuse him of doing, so she merely kept an eye on him.

"So that all brings us to the last note Dumbledore sent me. He asked me to meet him in his office so I left. I ended up running into Trelawney and she informed me, unintentionally of course, that she'd heard Malfoy celebrating in the Room of Requirement and that Snape was the one who'd overheard the Prophecy during her interview all those years ago," Harry said bitterly.

"Wait, Severus is the one who heard the Prophecy?" Lily asked in confusion. "But that would mean…"

"Snape was the one who told Voldemort who to attack," Harry finished for her. "Granted Voldemort could have gone for Neville, but seeing as how Neville is of pure-blood descent and I'm a half-blood like himself, he chose me.

"Continuing on, I went off to Dumbledore's office in a rage ready to ream him a new one for keeping that information to himself, and ready to tell him that Malfoy was in a very good mood which could only mean he was finished with his plan and ready to set it in motion. But when I arrived he was getting ready to leave. He'd found one of the Horcruxes and he asked if I wanted to come with him to get it," Harry said. He slid some memories into the bowl and sat back.

"This," he started. He took a moment to sigh deeply before he continued. "This is a really hard memory for me. Dumbledore died that night. My world turned upside down and that's when the war became even more intense and real. When we go into this, just remember one thing. Not everything is as it seems. Don't believe just what you see because some things happened later that…contradict what happened the night Dumbledore died and I didn't find out until right before Voldemort died. So just…be ready." Harry stood and everyone took that as the cue to enter the memories with bitten lips and hesitant steps.

When Harry finally followed them all into the Pensieve he found himself in the Gryffindor common room. Not Dumbledore's office where he'd originally intended. He looked around and saw Ron's smirk.

"Ronald Billius Weasley! I cannot believe you! How could you? What would you do if I showed everyone in the world your first kiss with Lavender when you both looked like sucker fish attacking each other's face?" shouted Ginny. That's when Harry realized what all the merriment in the room was for. Just as Harry had his realization the entire room turned to see the younger Harry climb through the portrait hole.

"We won! We won! Four hundred and fifty to a hundred and forty! We won!" shouted the younger Ron. The older Ginny growled and clenched her fists as her younger self ran at the younger Harry, leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs around him, and they shared their first, not so chaste, kiss.

While the room's inhabitants from the past went quiet, the memory group had a different reaction. George, Ron, Sirius, and James all wolf-whistled. Arthur, Lily, Molly, Fleur, and Hermione all smiled and 'awed' at the scene. However, it was the older Weasley brothers who worried Harry. The ones who had rarely seen Harry and Ginny share more than a chaste kiss once in a while.

He hadn't remembered the part where she'd leapt into his arms and wrapped her legs around his waist. See that was a small problem compared the incredibly large problem of where his hands had gone to hold her aloft. His hands had unfortunately planted themselves square on her bum, fingers splayed across her cheeks and, Harry noticed with a horrified grimace, squeezing them tightly.

Bill, Charlie and Percy all glared at Harry. Chaste kisses here and there were one thing but blatant groping of the buttocks in front of almost eighty other people was beyond inappropriate in the guys' eyes. Harry gulped and jumped over to his mother and Molly and stood between them.

"Coward," mouthed Bill. Harry shrugged and turned the other way, thanking his lucky stars that no spells could be uttered inside the Pensieve other than the ones related to the device. After Harry and Ginny had walked back out of the portrait hole, the memory dissolved and turned into the one Harry had originally planned on showing.

They watched as Harry barged into the Headmaster's office ready to eHe jsnbrant and scream at the old man. A few minutes passed while Dumbledore explained to Harry what they were planning on doing that night. Eventually, Dumbledore cottoned on to Harry's irritability.

"Harry, you were never a good Occlumens—"

"Oh boy," said Ron.

"Wrong thing to say," said Hermione.

Harry blew up and started shouting about Snape's betrayal. They all grew more and more frustrated as Dumbledore calmly tried to explain to Harry and Harry's refusal to accept Dumbledore's word on the matter. For several minutes the two went back and forth and finally the group all sucked in a breath when they heard Harry begin to accuse the Headmaster of leaving the school unprotected. They watched as Dumbledore soundly scolded Harry and put him in his place. Finally, they watched as Dumbledore returned to the original purpose of their meeting.

"Do you wish to come with me tonight?" he asked Harry who perked back up and responded positively.

"I'll take you with me on one condition: that you obey any command I might give you at once, and without question," replied Dumbledore. They went through the examples (I say run, you run; I say hide, you hide; I say leave me and save yourself, you do it without hesitation) and Harry agreed to them all.

"Well, at least he had some forethought as to how dangerous it was taking you with him. I'd probably feel a little better knowing you actually followed his rule though," Lily said with a frown.

"I followed his rule," Harry replied, quietly adding, "Unfortunately." Lily gave him a confused look which slowly turned into a sad one as she remembered what happened later that night.

The memory turned foggy and when it cleared they were in the common room with the trio. Harry explained what he'd heard from Trelawney about Malfoy's celebration, gave them the Map, and his bottle of Felix Felicis.

"Why give it to them? Why not take it yourself? You were headed into an unknown, definitely dangerous situation and it would have been completely justifiable for you to take it. What made you give it to them?" asked Percy.

"Why wouldn't I want to protect my best friends and girlfriend? The way I see it, I was going to be with the Greatest Wizard in the last several centuries. To me, I didn't need the luck. The people sitting in a building, possibly sitting ducks waiting to be hunted by Death Eaters, needed it more," Harry replied.

Percy stood still staring at Harry for a few moments. "You're a better man than I, Harry. I would have kept that potion and used it myself," he said quietly.

"Actually, Percy, I don't think you would have. Faced with your own life versus your family's life, you would have chosen your family's life over yours, even when you all were estranged. I'm sure of it," Harry replied. Percy saw Harry smile at him and couldn't help but grudgingly smile back. Harry saw Percy's very hesitant smile disappear when he turned away, becoming a deep frown. Harry made a mental note to have a chat with Percy soon. The self-destructive comments he'd made several times now were surely signs of a deeper problem and it worried Harry.

The scene changed and he watched as everyone looked around them at the bleak view.

"Remember the lady from the orphanage say that they brought the kids to the sea-side? Well there's a town a few miles inland and that way," he pointed vaguely south. "Tom brought two little kids with him to this cliff and when they returned the two kids were never really the same. Dumbledore found this area and decided that a cave down below the cliff is most likely where Tom brought the kids. It's also a prime location to hide something as precious as a part of one's soul. No one would dare to climb down there, and no boats can approach the cliffs because the water is too rough." By this point the memory skipped ahead to Harry pulling himself out of the water on the edge of the cave entrance.

"Merlin, that looks cold," George said pointing at Harry's shivering body.

"Very," Harry simply replied.

The next few minutes everyone watched as Dumbledore felt the air and the rock in front of them. Lily was frowning and watching the younger Harry closely. Finally, Dumbledore remembered Harry's continued dampness and solved the problem and she relaxed a bit.

Harry silently wondered at the fact that he now had someone who could worry about him getting things like hypothermia or a simple cold. This wonderment has slowly tapered off over the last week, but occasionally it hit him at strange moments like this one had. He hadn't worried about the cold when it was happening, but now a couple years later he didn't doubt that his mother might march right into that Head office and ream out a painting for neglecting her child. This thought warmed his soul and cheered him up enough that he wasn't even too worried about seeing the next several memories.

"I rather think that we are required to make payment to pass."

"What?" asked a couple people simultaneously.

"Blood, if I am not much mistaken."

The girls all made disgusted faces and the guys shared worried glances. Everyone flinched when Dumbledore slashed his arm and the resulting spray of red that covered the wall made a few people rather queasy.

Everyone floated along over the water since the ledge Harry and the headmaster were walking along wasn't wide enough for everyone else. The attempt at summoning the Horcrux resulted in scattered forced chuckles from several people. Harry was surprised that Hermione didn't scoff, even more so when Percy didn't either. No one asked what had jumped out of the lake, which Harry was grateful for since didn't know how he would answer if they did.

Soon enough the two men reached the small boat and Dumbledore explained about Voldemort's plan, including the idea that he might someday want to return to the Horcrux and so the boat should be safe for them at the moment.

"But what about your weight? That thing doesn't look like it'd hold a crup let alone two grown men," Molly said.

"He explains in a moment," Harry said quickly.

Dumbledore spoke about magical power versus physical weight.

"I do not think you will count, Harry: You are underage and unqualified. Voldemort would never have expected a sixteen-year-old to reach this place: I think it unlikely that your powers would register compared to mine."

Harry, morale slightly less than before, climbed into the boat followed by Albus. The group of viewers floated along over the water sharing quiet comments on how strange that felt.

Fleur gasped loudly and squealed making everyone else jump out of their skin.

"A face! I saw a face in ze water!" she shrieked. She had grasped Bill by the arm and was clinging to him tightly. Everyone glanced downward, shivering as they passed over dozens of bodies slightly out of view and distorted by the rippling water.

"Voldemort's victims?" George asked slowly.

"Arthur! What if all the people who disappeared without a trace are in this lake? What should we do?" asked Molly, her eyes wide.

"Molly, dear, I don't know if there is anything we can do. Harry, we'll need to let Kingsley know about this. If a Muggle were to find this…" the red headed patriarch trailed off with a sigh and a shake of his head.

"But Arthur," she said shakily.

"I know, love. I know," he said softly, clutching her hand as she laid her head on his shoulder and started to cry.

"But one of them jumped," Harry said softly.

"So, these are Voldemort's defence?" said Bill.

"Pretty good defence," Charlie muttered.

They listened as Dumbledore explained how to fight Inferi with fire if need arose. Eventually, they reached the small island in the centre of the lake. It was small enough that everyone barely fit on it touching shoulder to shoulder. Though the memory viewers had nothing to worry about, no one went near the water.

"What kind of potion is that?" asked Lily.

"I am not sure. Something more worrisome than blood and bodies, however," responded Dumbledore. For several long tense minutes Dumbledore attempted to discover what the contents of the basin were. Finally, he lowered his wand.

"I can only conclude that this potion is supposed to be drunk."

"Oh dear," Lily said fearfully. "This is not right."

They all watched as Dumbledore explained that he believed it would not kill him right away or even at all possibly. Voldemort would want to question whoever came to be that far into the cave. Finally, Dumbledore spoke the words Harry dreaded to hear again.

"Harry, it will be your job to make sure I keep drinking, even if you have to tip the potion into my protesting mouth. You understand?" Everyone gasped. "You remember the condition on which I brought you with me?"

"That bastard!" James said violently.

"James," Lily started, but he interrupted her.

"No Lily, he only brought Harry because he knew Harry looked up to him and trusted him. He knew if anyone would listen to him and do exactly as he said it would be a young kid looking up to his mentor," James argued. He opened his mouth to continue but Harry stopped him.

"Dad, remember what I said earlier. Not everything is what you see. There was more going on that night that you don't know about, so please just watch," he said. James immediately shut up. He blinked a few times and then, frowning, turned and watched the scene with a critical eye.

By this point they were half way through the basin of liquid. Harry had resorted to asking Dumbledore to drink more. Lily and Fleur were both watching with horrified, sad eyes, while all the others were glancing back and forth between the two Harrys.

"Make it stop, make it stop," moaned the once dignified Headmaster.

"Yes…yes, this'll make it stop," croaked Harry. It was plain to see how much he hated himself for saying it. Everyone reared back in surprise when Dumbledore screamed in agony.

"Oh my god," Hermione muttered tearfully. She hid her face in Ron's shoulder and breathed deeply, trying to keep from crying. Ron looked dejected as he kept his eyes on Dumbledore. Harry was visibly clenching his jaw, his temples pulsing, hands clenching into fists.

"This will make it stop, Professor," his voice cracking. Lily leaned over and pulled her Harry into her arms.

"Oh Harry," she murmured a few times.

Everyone's hearts were breaking watching Dumbledore suffer and Harry's will to follow orders slowly breaking and then his altruistic nature forcing it back into place. Each goblet brought the level of potion down further, but was agonizing for everyone watching. Finally, Harry got to the last goblet. By this point everyone in the cave had damp eyes but when the old man finally screamed "KILL ME!" everyone started crying.

"This—this one will! Just drink this…It'll be over…all over!" Harry shouted with misty eyes. Everyone was openly crying now, and when Dumbledore slumped over they all shouted "NO!" along with the memory Harry.

They all heaved a giant sigh of relief when Dumbledore finally asked for some water. But when they saw the water disappear when it touched the lips of the parched man, they all knew. Immediately, they all turned and looked at the lake just as Harry ran for the edge and plunged his arm in, holding the goblet.

Harry ran back to Dumbledore with the water and they all watched, anticipation growing when they saw the water start to ripple and bodies rise from the depths.

Lily screamed as she realized one had a grip on her son and was pulling him closer to the water's edge. A few tense minutes went by as Harry struggled to keep the Inferi at bay when finally a ring of fire erupted around Harry. Everyone cheered when they saw Dumbledore standing and wielding his wand. Within moments Harry and Dumbledore had stumbled back to the boat and were heading back to the entrance.

Eventually the two made it to the doorway and Harry wiped his own blood on the wall.

"I am not worried, Harry. I am with you."

After those touching words the memory went fuzzy and they were flying through the air following Harry on a broom. Harry quickly explained what had been skipped.

"I Apparated us to Hogsmeade from just outside the cave entrance. We arrived in front of the Three Broomsticks and Madam Rosmerta lent us two brooms because she had just seen the Dark Mark above the school. Dumbledore had asked me to get Snape, not Madam Pomfrey, because he was the expert in potions and dark spells. But when he saw the Mark floating above the tower he was able to jump on a broom and fly all the way to the school, casting the spell to drop the wards so we could fly in at speed," Harry said as the group flew up to the tower. It was an incredibly odd feeling, watching the ground shrink away as they followed the memory up.

The next several minutes were quite intense as they watched Harry and Albus argue, Dumbledore freeze Harry, Malfoy show up and disarm the headmaster, and the following conversation. Everyone could see Draco lower his wand in the end, and they could see that he was rethinking his choices. When the Death Eaters broke through and entered the ramparts everyone drooped or sighed. The inevitable was about to happen.

"Dumbledore cornered! Dumbledore wandless, Dumbledore alone! Well done, Draco, well done!"

The next few minutes passed in surprisingly swift velocity. Bill and Fleur both looked like they wanted to attack Greyback when started speaking. Snape showed up and Sirius and James both had furious looks on their faces, clenched fists, and fighting stances. Had Snape been alive and within reach of the two men, he probably wouldn't have survived. Lily looked at her childhood friend with an incredibly sad expression on her face.

Everyone else had heard the true story of that night from Harry. They knew the truth behind Dumbledore's plea. However, despite that knowledge everyone flinched or cried out when Snape uttered those hateful words.

"Avada Kedavra!"

The memory went fuzzy and black and the next thing they saw was Harry running after a couple shapes in the darkness. His nose was bleeding out of both nostrils, his face was bruised, and the intense look of hatred emblazoned in his eyes was enough to frighten everyone.

The fight between the two black haired wizards was passionate and fairly one sided. Harry could tell that everyone was frustrated with the fact that every spell his younger self sent at the Potions Master was blocked and parried.

"Coward, did you call me, Potter? Your father would never attack me unless it was four on one, what would you call him, I wonder?" shouted Snape.

James gasped. Sirius gritted his teeth.

"Bastard," Sirius grunted. James looked as if he'd been punched in the stomach.

"Blocked again and again and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter!" Snape shouted at the younger Harry.

"It's almost like he was giving you one last piece of advice," Hermione whispered to Harry.

Everyone cried out when they saw a spell come out of nowhere and hit Harry. The resulting screaming and thrashing immediately made the torture spell known to them all, but what surprised them most was Severus stopping it and then Harry jumping back up and continuing the fight.

Everyone was holding their breath when Harry came within feet of the older wizard. He was silently casting but Snape's reaction was violently sudden. Harry's body went flying through the air after the loud bang. He struggled for a couple moments while Snape spoke to him.

"Kill me then," Harry spat angrily. "Kill me like you killed him, you coward—"

"DON'T CALL ME COWARD!" Snape roared.

They all were shocked at the intensity of the emotion behind Snape's cry. Though they all cried out when they saw a white hot spell smack Harry in the face and once again his body flew back several feet.

"Woo! Go Beaky!" Sirius shouted suddenly, and they saw the hippogriff attack Snape.

With the distant crack of Snape's Disapparition the memory faded and they all were ejected from the Pensieve. The group silently took their seats once more and no one said anything for several long minutes. Finally, Harry sat forward and, hands clasped tightly, began speaking.

"When Hagrid and I walked back after putting out the fire on his house, we saw Dumbledore's body on the lawn. Hagrid had refused to believe that Dumbledore was dead, but then we saw his body…I walked up to him and knelt down beside him. I found the locket we'd gotten earlier at the cave and saw it was open. There was a piece of paper inside, folded up. I opened it and read it: To the Dark Lord, I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more. It was signed with the initials," Harry paused and glanced at Sirius who noticed the glance and became worried.

"R.A.B.," Harry finished slowly. James and Sirius both gasped. Tears sprang up in Sirius eyes and James grabbed Sirius' shoulder and squeezed. "Regulus Arcturus Black," Harry clarified for everyone else. Everyone gave Sirius a sympathetic look.

"Sirius, I'll explain more about your brother in a bit, but are you going to be okay if I finish up with that night first?" Harry asked.

Sirius, who had been staring off into the distance with a sad, confused look, gave Harry a slight smile and nodded.

"Okay. After I read the note, I knew that everything that had just happened was for nothing. We had no Horcrux, no idea where the real one was, and now, as far as I was concerned, our only hope was gone. The one wizard Voldemort ever feared was dead. It was only a matter of time before we lost the war.

"Ginny ended up getting me up and away from the body and led me to the hospital wing where we found Bill had been attacked by Greyback. Thankfully it wasn't a full moon, so aside from some scarring and a new taste for rare meat, Bill was going to be fine. I told everyone about Dumbledore, and then Fawkes…" Harry paused.

"Fawkes sang a Lament before he disappeared," Hermione finished for him.

"A lament?" asked George.

"A Phoenix Lament is the mourning song of an immortal being that had a connection to a mortal being that had recently passed on. So basically, Fawkes was Dumbledore's familiar and when Dumbledore died, that connection between them snapped and Fawkes knew instantly. Usually a Phoenix Lament is sung within a day of the mortal being's passing. Fawkes sang his song really soon after Dumbledore's death, which means Fawkes either knew Dumbledore wasn't going to live much longer or because of the violence of his death," Hermione said. "After a Lament is sung, the Phoenix normally disappears for a hundred or so years. It takes a very long time for a Phoenix to overcome the grief of the passing of their mortal friend."

"So Fawkes is just gone now?" asked Sirius.

Hermione simply nodded.

"I don't know what exactly happened with everyone else during the fight, all I know is that McGonagall had Flitwick go get Snape, they were all fighting…" Harry shrugged.

"Well, we took your advice and were watching for Malfoy on the Map," Ron started. He spent the next few minutes explaining how they handled themselves. How Felix Felicis had helped immensely and where they all were and what they did. Hermione and Ginny interjecting their own stories with Ron.

After they were done Bill took his turn telling everyone about what the Order and teachers were doing, up until he was attacked that is.

Harry shared the short time that was spent in the Hospital wing, including Fleur's declaration of love for Bill, Molly's change of heart towards Fleur (to Molly's embarrassment), and finally Tonks' declaration of love towards Remus. Finally, he got to the part where McGonagall asked to speak to him alone in her office. This was where the secrecy of the next year's adventure really started. Harry explained the reasoning behind why he refused to tell anyone what he and Dumbledore had been doing.

"He told me that Hermione and Ron were the only ones I could really trust with the information of the Horcruxes. They were the only ones I should tell because if the information got out Voldemort would have hidden the ones he'd made in better places, or kept them near his person at all times. Even worse would have been if he'd gone to get all his Horcruxes and realized that by that point, the diary, the Ring, and the Locket were all destroyed or missing. If he had discovered that he would have made more and kept those close as well. Keeping that information to myself and Hermione and Ron, was imperative to the outcome of the war. I hated keeping it from everyone, but I knew the secrecy was important.

"McGonagall asked me to tell, tried to convince me that since Dumbledore had died it could be told to her at the very least and she could decide what to do with the information," Harry said.

"Do you think we should have invited her tonight?" asked Hermione.

"No," Harry said shaking his head. "I've already told her about the Horcruxes. After the war ended I told her, Kingsley, one of the Goblin elders, and the head of the Auror department. The four of them agreed it was probably for the best that I kept the whole thing as secret as possible. Then the Goblin decided that since…well, that part of the story will come up later, but I will say that breaking into Gringotts is not something you should ever do. The only reason we got off lightly was because the Horcrux had been stolen in the first place, turned into a Dark object, and Gringotts apparently disapproves of hiding Dark objects in their vaults. Something about clients finding forgotten Dark objects in their family vaults, touching them, and dying. Apparently even Goblins don't like it when their clients die," Harry finished with a sarcastic roll of his eyes.

"Anyway, the Heads of the Houses arrived in the office and they all discussed whether or not Hogwarts should remain open. Then we discussed whether to keep the students there for the headmaster's funeral before sending them home.

"The funeral was a few days later and is pretty much a blur to me now. I remember clearly what happened afterwards though," he said glancing at Ginny who stoically stared back into his eyes unblinkingly.

"I…" Harry took a deep breath. "I broke up with Ginny." Everyone knew this already but they didn't exactly know or understand why. "I knew that I was going to have to leave. I had a job to do now and I knew that Voldemort used people his enemies cared about to hurt them and, although I knew Ginny would still be a target, not being my girlfriend would lessen the mark on her slightly." Harry gazed into her eyes and smiled his apology. She smiled back with her acceptance.

"After we broke up I was accosted by the Minister. He asked me once again to be the poster boy for the Ministry and I, once again, turned him down. Probably made him pretty mad too. But he picked the ultimate wrong time to approach me. I'd just finished the funeral of my mentor and broke up with my girlfriend; definitely the wrong time. After that it was pretty much a train ride back to the Dursleys for one last stay," Harry finished the story of his sixth year and sat back in his chair, downing the last of his now watery drink.

Everyone sat pondering the story they'd just heard. According to Harry's watch it was nearing midnight so he called Kreacher to take all the glasses and plates back to the kitchen.

"We should probably get going to bed soon. Sirius, if you want I can tell you about your brother tonight, just the two of us," Harry offered. Sirius nodded slowly.

"I don't know if I could get to sleep if I didn't know the truth," he said softly.

Everyone slowly stood up and bid their farewells. Soon all who was left on the patio were Harry, Sirius, and James. Lily had given Sirius a peck on the top of the head and said she would leave them in peace. She hadn't known Regulus, so it was only right to have James be the one to stay for moral support.

For a moment Harry contemplated the idea of having Kreacher present for this retelling, but then Harry realized that Sirius might consider Kreacher as having abandoned Regulus to die instead of save him and might try to kill the elf.

"We didn't know right away who R.A.B. was," Harry began. "It wasn't until about three or four months later actually. We were here at Grimmauld Place and happened to walk past Regulus' bedroom door and noticed his full name on the placard. By that point we were in hiding from the Ministry and this house wasn't considered very safe anymore because once Dumbledore, the Secret Keeper, died the Secret could be told to anyone, and Snape knew the location.

"Everyone was worried that Snape would lead the Death Eaters or even Voldemort here, so it was pretty much abandoned. Mad-Eye had placed some spells on the entrance hall so that if Snape did come back for some reason his tongue would be tied, and a dust version of Dumbledore rose up out of the floor and flew at whoever came in the front door. Scared the hell out of Hermione, Ron, and me when we first got here.

"Anyway, once we realized who R.A.B. was, we remembered the cleaning that happened in ninety-five. There was a cabinet that held a lot of Dark items…one of which was a big, silver locket that no one could open," Harry said.

Sirius' eyes widened. The next several minutes Harry explained what Kreacher had told them about the lake, Voldemort needing an elf, Regulus' decision to visit the cave with Kreacher, Regulus' last order to Kreacher, and finally Regulus' death in the black lake in the cave.

Sirius spent a moment with his head in his hands breathing deeply. Then he spent a moment attempting to leave the patio to find Kreacher and do bodily harm to the old elf. The furious look on his face made Harry glad he didn't have the elf join them. James and Harry finally got him to sit back down.

"Sirius, I know you're mad at Kreacher, but you need to understand something. Kreacher cared about Regulus, a lot. The combination of that potion from the cave, plus years of knowing he could have saved the Master he loved, destroyed Kreacher. Added to that is the fact that he couldn't finish Regulus' last order. He'd told Kreacher to destroy the locket with whatever means he could find. But Kreacher couldn't speak Parseltongue and that was the only way to open the locket, and since he couldn't open it, he couldn't destroy it." Harry took a breath.

"Sirius, do you know anything about House Elves besides they serve us and are freed by clothes?" Harry asked.

"Just that if they disobey or do something wrong they have to punish themselves. They also can Apparate and Disapparate where people can't," Sirius responded.

Harry thought for a moment. He couldn't use Kreacher because he was sure that if that particular elf showed up Sirius would lose it and try to attack him. The only other elves Harry had known were Dobby and Winky. Dobby was gone, and Winky was as good as after her years of drinking. Then Harry remembered Meadow Haven.

"Mitsy," he called suddenly. There was a soft pop and the small female elf arrived.

"Master Harry," she said primly.

"Mitsy, please sit with us for a few minutes. I have a few questions about House Elves. Is it okay if I ask you some questions?" he asked.

"Mitsy is okay with Master Harry asking questions. Mitsy can answer them," she said as she hesitantly hoisted herself into a chair when Harry directed her to sit at the table.

"Mitsy, if an elf is ordered to do something, like make dinner for example, what happens to the elf after the order is made? Like feelings or sensations or something like that. What do you feel physically?" asked Harry. Mitsy, looking surprised, blinked a few times and opened and closed her mouth once or twice.

"I's…when Mitsy is ordered to do something I's feel…like I must do it 'mediately. If I's not doing it quick I's not feel right in here," the elf said patting her stomach. "Like, I's ate something foul and I's gonna get the runs." James snorted but quickly covered his mouth. Harry smiled and worked hard not to laugh also.

"So you feel sick until your task is finished?" he asked.

"No, Master Harry, not exactly. Usually the sick feeling goes 'way once Mitsy starts working," she replied.

"Okay, so you're ordered to do something and until you start it, you feel ill. But once it's started the feeling goes away. But what happens if you don't start right away?" asked Harry. James and Sirius were paying close attention. They'd both lived the first twenty or so years of their lives with elves but never felt the need to ask such deep seeded question about the nature of those elves.

"If I's not starting right away the sick feeling will get worser," Mitsy said slowly. "But Mitsy usually does her work right away," she said eagerly.

"It's okay Mitsy, this isn't about you. You do some amazing work. I remember when I walked into Meadow Haven it looked amazing. Like people had been actively living there all along. It felt like we had walked into someone else's house, and not one that had been left empty for almost twenty years," Harry reassured her. The elf perked up right away. "I'm only asking you these questions because Sirius has to understand the nature of house elves and what makes them behave the way they do, okay? You aren't in trouble or anything," Harry said. Mitsy looked relieved and nodded her head.

"Ye'sir Master Harry," she said.

"Um…" Harry thought for the next question. "Okay, if you aren't able to do something you're ordered to, like the order is absolutely impossible for any elf to accomplish – say bring real dust from Mars to your Master – what happens to you?" he asked.

Mitsy took a moment then said, "I's not sure, Master Harry. That has never happened to Mitsy before. But Mitsy would think that the elf would have to tell its Master of its failings and accept a punishment. If a elf cannot tell its Master, the elf must punish itself 'mediately with a bad punishment or the sick feeling gets worser." Harry gave his dad and Sirius a look.

"And if you punish yourself the sick feeling goes away?" he asked.

"Most of the time. If the sick feeling doesn't leave all the way, we must do 'nother punishment," Mitsy said matter-of-factly. James had a frown on his face.

"Do you ever punish yourself Mitsy?" James asked.

"Master Harold and Mistress Lily ordered all the elves at Meadow Haven not to punish ourselves. So we's not able to do a punishment, but sometimes, Mitsy forgets, sir," she said with a worried glance up at James.

"What happens then? If you can't punish yourself, can't tell your Master, and can't finish an order? What happens to you if that were to happen?" asked Sirius.

"I's not sure, Captain Siri," Mitsy said. Harry stifled a snort as the elf continued. "Mitsy would guess that the elf would live in constant pain and shame for doing what a elf must do."

"Well, what happens if an elf directly disobeys an order from their Master?" asked James.

"That does not happen much, Master James. It be quite rare, but depending upon the level of importance of the order, a elf would most definitely need to do a punishment. They's could also end up dead," Mitsy said shakily. Harry was surprised at the level of commitment elves were forced to obey.

"Would the elf in question just die or…would they have to…kill themselves?" asked James uncertainly.

"That would depend on the offence," Mitsy said slowly. "If it was really bad they would have to kill themselves as punishment. If it's even worser than that, they would just die."

"Okay," Harry paused. House elves officially had the worst existence he could imagine.

He considered his next question before speaking and knew it would possibly be the fundamental question to ending Sirius' rage against Kreacher. He hoped Mitsy could answer it for them. "This one is going to be hard and I would really like an answer, but if you can't answer don't worry about it, okay?" Mitsy nodded her head and leaned forward. "If an elf is ordered to do something that could indirectly end in their Master's death, but it was their Master who ordered it to happen, what would that do to an elf?" he asked slowly.

James and Sirius looked between Harry and Mitsy as the elf thought to herself for a moment.

"Mitsy would think that a elf would have to do what they's Master ordered, despite what that elf wanted. If they's ordered, they must do, no matter what," Mitsy said ominously.

"So, let's use Sirius' brother Regulus as an example, okay?" Harry spoke to Mitsy but asked Sirius' permission silently with his eyes. Sirius nodded slowly, pain clouding his vision. "Regulus brought Kreacher with him to a cave. There was a potion that we guess drinking it brings your nightmares alive around you. Instead of making Kreacher drink the potion, Regulus drank it instead. At the bottom of the bowl of potion was a locket with a Dark curse on it. Before Regulus drank the potion, he ordered Kreacher to force all the liquid into Regulus' mouth no matter what he said, switch the locket with a different one and then go home, leaving Regulus there where he died. Kreacher was ordered to destroy the Dark curse on the locket no matter what it took and never tell anyone in the family what had happened." Harry watched Sirius as he spoke and could see Sirius coming to terms with his brother's death.

"Kreacher was unable to destroy the locket because of the Dark curse on it. So he hid the locket here in the house. Eventually, Mrs. Black died and left Kreacher here all alone for several long years. When we arrived at the house, Kreacher was pretty much insane. He muttered to himself and didn't think we could hear him, he refused to clean anything, and he wouldn't do anything anyone asked him to do unless he was directly ordered to do it by Sirius. Eventually, he was able to find loopholes in his orders and left the house. Does this sound like something that could happen to an elf that couldn't accomplish an order and wasn't allowed to tell his Master?" Harry finished.

Mitsy looked at him with a puzzled look. It took her a few moments of thinking before she was ready to answer. "I's not sure, Master Harry. It sounds like what could happen, but Mitsy thinks there might be more to it than just a failed order. Was Kreacher allowed to punish hisself?" she asked timidly.

"Yes. My parents were fine with our elves punishing themselves, encouraged it even," Sirius said bitterly.

"Then Mitsy thinks that Kreacher would have been able to punish hisself then and be done with it. Mitsy thinks maybe being alone for so long messed with Kreacher's head probably, which added to the punishment Kreacher set for hisself," she said finally.

"Another layer we should consider is that Voldemort made Kreacher drink that potion also. That could have affected Kreacher before Mrs. Black's death, then afterward Kreacher just had no one to talk to besides an insane portrait. Additionally, he's really old, even for an elf. What I'm trying to get at, Sirius, is that Kreacher couldn't help what happened to Regulus. He could have tried to save your brother but in doing so he might have dropped the locket and lost it in that lake, it would also have been against a direct order from his Master. He had to do what he was ordered. Regulus knew what he was doing, he knew that he might die. The letter he put in the fake locket proves that. He said, "I know I will be dead long before you read this… I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more. He knew he was probably going to die or be killed, and he did it anyway. You can be proud that he did the right thing before he died," Harry said softly.

"It's just…not fair! Why did my little brother have to die and that insane bloody elf get to live?" Sirius shouted.

"Sirius, every day after Regulus died was torture for Kreacher. He had to live knowing he was the reason his beloved Master was dead. You heard what Mitsy said. He probably spent the next twenty years suffering from physical pain not to mention emotional pain. I'm not saying it's easy to accept or understand but Kreacher doesn't deserve your hatred now. What's done is done, and we can't change the past. I've gotten Kreacher back his sanity and he's happily working again. Which means his job was finished. He spent a long enough time in pain and loneliness. He deserves something good in life now," Harry said softly. "Besides, if it weren't for Kreacher, we'd never be officially rid of Voldemort. Kreacher helped me vanquish that bastard."

"But…" Sirius said softly. Tears welled up in his eyes. "I may have treated Reggie like dirt after I was sorted into Gryffindor, but I never stopped trying to get him to understand that our parents were wrong in their beliefs. For years I thought he was killed by Voldemort for some stupid mistake he made in that bastard's service and I felt like it was my fault for not getting through to him in time…or for giving up on him. But now…now I know that he died doing something good! Something heroic and noble…" Sirius choked and gasped. "He was my brother. And I spent the last decade believing the worst of him. What kind of person does that make me?" Sirius asked, tears flowing.

"It makes you human, Sirius," Harry said softly, patting his godfather's back. "You didn't have all the facts, and you can't help what you believed and did in the past based off of half the story. What you believed happened probably would have happened if Regulus hadn't discovered Voldemort's secret. You and I both know that what you believed to have happened was one hundred per cent possible. Now you can go on knowing that he did the right thing and that you know the truth finally. You can even do something to memorialize him for closure," Harry said.

"I know what might make you feel better," James said. The others looked at him and he smiled before standing up. "Mitsy you can go back to Meadow Haven now. Thank you for your help tonight. Guys, follow me."

They followed James up to the Drawing room and stood facing the tapestry with the Black family Tree. James pointed to Regulus' name.

"Blast it," he said simply. Sirius just stared at him in utter confusion. Harry gave his dad a look that clearly said, "What the hell are you thinking?"

"Sirius," James started. "From the age of eleven you've hated your parents for how they treated you. When you ran away they blasted you off this glorified curtain and you spent the next few years bragging that the only people in your family who got blasted off the curtain were the decent, good Blacks. You were proud of being blasted off that family tree. It meant you were one of the few decent ones. Now…it's your turn to make your brother proud, where ever he is." Harry stared at his father in awe. It was perfect. Sirius turned and stared at the black splotch where his own name had been. Where Tonks, Andromeda, and all his other 'dishonoured' relatives names once sat, but were now black scorch marks.

Slowly he began to nod to himself, then a smile started to spread. He raised his wand and cast a blast of fire at the name Regulus Arcturus Black. As soon as the flame went out, Sirius smiled sadly. He stepped forward and placed a hand over the spot where his brother's name had once been and stood there for several moments.

"Guys," he finally said as he turned around. "I think it's time for bed."

---

A/N: Okay people. I'm sorry this took so long, but the last few weeks have been the worst ever. I'm not going to go into it, except for mom and friend with cancer, grandma in hospital, other friend died, baby sister graduated, and favourite aunt is moving to Florida. I've been crazy busy, but I made this chapter +15,000 words long – the longest chapter I've ever written...in any of my stories – to make up for it. I expect lots of reviews since the website has now put a new review feature at the bottom of this page...it makes it so much easier to review, so you have no excuse now! PLEASE REVIEW!

Happy Birthday to Parifan! Sorry this is late, but I did want to make sure I posted this one for you! Thanks to Teufel1987 for beta'ing this super beast!

NOW GO READ MY PROFILE UPDATE! IMPORTANT NOTICE!