AN: Once again I am not JK Rowling.
The moment the minister left Sirius turned to us.
"What did he want?" Sirius asked, looking around at Harry, Ron, and I as Mrs. Weasley came hurrying back to us.
"To give us what Dumbledore left us," Harry said. "They've only just released the content of his will."
Outside in the garden, over the dinner tables, the three objects Scrimgeour had given them were passed from hand to hand. Everyone exclaimed over the Deluminator and The Tales of Beedle the Bard and lamented the fact that Scrimgeour had refused to pass on the sword, but none of them could offer any suggestion as to why Dumbledore would have left Harry an old Snitch. As Mr. Weasley examined the Deluminator for the third of fourth time, Mrs. Weasley said tentatively, "Harry, dear, everyone's awfully hungry we didn't like to start without you… Shall I serve dinner now?"
We all ate rather hurriedly and then after a hasty chorus of "Happy Birthday" and much gulping of cake, the party broke up. Hagrid, who was invited to the wedding the following day, but was far too bulky to sleep in the overstretched Burrow, left to set up a tent for himself in a neighboring field.
Harry opened two more gifts. The first was a sneakoscope from myself. The second was from Sirius. He had given him Kreacher. I twitched and turned to glare at Sirius but he only gave me a cheeky smile in return.
"Meet us upstairs," Harry whispered to me, while we helped Mrs. Weasley restore the garden to its normal state. "After everyone's gone to bed."
Sirius was adamant about coming with me to talk to Harry and Ron since he knew everything already. When we slipped into the room Ron was looking at his new Deluminator and Harry was slipping a few things into the little mokeskin pouch.
"Muffliato." I whispered waving my hand thinking of Severus and all he had done for us so far.
"Thought you didn't approve of that spell?" said Ron.
"Times change," I said. "Now, show us that Deluminator."
Ron obliged at once. Holding it up in front of him, he clicked it. The solitary lamp they had lit went out at once.
"The thing is," Sirius whispered through the dark, "you could have achieved that with Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder."
There was a small click, and the ball of light from the lamp flew back to the ceiling and illuminated them all once more.
"Still, it's cool," Ron said, a little defensively. "And from what they said, Dumbledore invented it himself!"
"I know but, surely he wouldn't have singled you out in his will just to help us turn out the lights!" I said as Sirius helped me onto Ron's bed.
"D'you think he knew the Ministry would confiscate his will and examine everything he'd left us?" Harry asked
"Definitely," I said nodding. "He couldn't tell us in the will why he was leaving us these things, but that will doesn't explain…"
"… why he couldn't have given us a hint when he was alive?" Ron asked.
"Well, exactly," I said, now flicking through The Tales of Beedle the Bard. "If these things are important enough to pass on right under the nose of the Ministry, you'd think he'd have left us know why… unless he thought it was obvious?"
"Thought wrong, then, didn't he?" Ron said. "I always said he was mental. Brilliant and everything, but cracked. Leaving Harry an old Snitch – what the hell was that about?"
"I've no idea," I said. "When Scrimgeour made you take it, Harry, I was so sure that something was going to happen!"
"Yeah, well," Harry said raising the snitch up. "I wasn't going to try too hard in front of Scrimgeour was I?"
"What do you mean?" Sirius asked frowning. I looked up from my book confused.
"The Snitch I caught in my first ever Quidditch match?" Harry said "Don't you remember?"
I looked simply bemused, what was he talking about. Ron, however, gasped, pointing frantically from Harry to the Snitch and back again until he found his voice.
"That was the one you nearly swallowed!" I sat up my eyes wide. How could I have forgotten that?
"Exactly," Harry said, and with his heart beating fast, he pressed his mouth to the Snitch.
It did not open. I sighed and frowned but Sirius gasped.
"Writing! There's writing on it, quick, look!"
Small slanted writing appeared on the side. Dumbledore's writing. My throat tightened and I swallowed thickly. I open at the close.
"'I open at the close….' What's that supposed to mean?"
We all shook our heads looking confused.
"I open at the close… at the close… I open at the close…"
But no matter how often we repeated the words, with many different inflections, we were unable to wring any more meaning from them.
"And the sword," Ron said finally, when they had at last abandoned their attempts to divine meaning in the Snitch's inscription.
"Why did he want Harry to have the sword?" Sirius asked frowning.
"And why couldn't he just have told me?" Harry said quietly. "I was there, it was right there on the wall of his office during all our talks last year! If he wanted me to have it, why didn't he just give it to me then?"
I ignored the pained look on Harry's face as best I could. Sirius slipped his hand into mine.
"And as for this book." I said "The Tales of Beedle the Bard... I've never even heard of them!"
"You've never heard of The Tales of Beedle the Bard?" Sirius said incredulously. "You're kidding, right?"
"No, I'm not," I said in surprise looking up. "Do you know them then?"
"Well, of course I do!" Harry's head snapped up. Ron was nodding looking at Sirius.
"Oh come on! All the old kids' stories are supposed to be Beedle's aren't they? 'The Fountain of Fair Fortune' … 'The Wizard and the Hopping Pot'… 'Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump'…"
"Excuse me?" I said giggling. "What was the last one?" Sirius gave me a dirty look.
"Come off it!" Ron said, looking in disbelief between Harry and I. "You must've heard of Babbitty Rabbitty –"
"Ron, you know full well Harry and I were brought up by Muggles!" I said slowly. "We didn't hear stories like that when we were little, we heard 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves' and 'Cinderella' –"
"What's that, an illness?" asked Ron. I snorted before I could stop myself.
"So these are children's stories?" I asked, bending over the runes.
"Yeah." Ron said uncertainly. "I mean, just what you hear, you know, that all these old stories came from Beedle. I dunno what they're like in the original versions."
"But I wonder why Dumbledore thought I should read them?" I said looking at the cover.
"Anyway what's your plan?" Sirius asked looking between us. He had on a brave face but I could see the pain in his eyes.
"We'll be leaving the day after tomorrow. I've packed everything we could possibly need. The only question is where do we start. I think we'll be living on the run for awhile." I said rubbing my eyes.
"Do you know how to kill them when we do find them?" Ron asked turning to me.
"Yes. I read the book Secrets of the Darkest Art and all it had to say about Horcruxes. It tells you all about how to make them. The book is full of dark evil magic. Voldemort could have easily figured out how to make them from that book."
"Why did he have to ask Slughorn how to make a Horcrux, then, if he'd already read that?" Ron asked.
"He only approached Slughorn to find out what would happen if you split your soul into seven," Harry said. "Dumbledore was sure Riddle already knew how to make a Horcrux by the time he asked Slughorn about them. I think you're right, Hermione, that could easily have been where he got the information."
"And the more I've read about them," I said feeling queasy "the more horrible they seem, and the less I can believe that he actually made six. It warns in this book how unstable you make the rest of your soul by ripping it, and that's just by making one Horcrux!"
"Isn't there any way of putting yourself back together?" Sirius asked.
"Yes," I said with a hallow smile. "but it would be excruciatingly painful."
"Why? How do you do it?" Harry asked.
"Remorse," I said simply. "You've got to really feel what you've done. There's a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can destroy you. I can't see Voldemort attempting it somehow, can you?"
"No," Ron said immediately shaking his head. "So how does it explain to destroy a horcrux."
"Well it warns Dark wizards how strong they have to make the enchantments on them. From all that I've read, what Harry did to Riddle's diary was one of the few really foolproof ways of destroying a Horcrux."
"What, stabbing it with a basilisk fang?" Harry asked surprised.
"Oh well, lucky we've got such a large supply of basilisk fangs, then," Ron said bitterly. "I was wondering what we were going to do with them."
"It doesn't have to be a basilisk fang," I said patiently. "It has to be something so destructive that the Horcrux can't repair itself. Basilisk venom only has one antidote, and it's incredibly rare –"
"– phoenix tears," Sirius said nodding.
"Exactly," I said. "Our problem is that there are very few substances as destructive as basilisk venom, and they're all dangerous to carry around with you. That's a problem we're going to have to solve, though, because ripping, smashing, or crushing a Horcrux won't do the trick. You've got to put it beyond magical repair."
"But even if we wreck the thing it lives in," Ron said, "why can't the bit of soul in it just go and live in something else?"
"Because a Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being." Sirius said. My eyes widened in surprise and I nodded. When Sirius saw Harry and Ron's confused looks he continued. "Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron, and ran you through with it, I wouldn't damage your soul at all."
"Which would be a real comfort to me, I'm sure," Ron said as Harry laughed,
"It should be, actually! But my point is that whatever happens to your body, your soul will survive, untouched," Sirius said slowly. "But it's the other way round with a Horcrux. The fragment of soul inside it depends on its container, its enchanted body, for survival. It can't exist without it."
"Well where would we get a basilisk fang?" Harry asked running a hand through his hair.
"We already have one." I said shifting nervously. Ron and Harry both snapped their heads towards me in surprise. "I stole some things from Professor Snape's stores."
Harry and Ron both whooped happily. "Your bloody brilliant. Now all we need to do is figure out who R.A.B. is..."
Sirius froze and looked up slowly. "Why do you want to know who that is?"
"Whoever they are stole the Horcrux locket." Harry said pulling the letter out of the mokeskin pouch. He gave it to Sirius who read it quickly his eyes wide and his face paling drastically.
"Good Merlin." He said when he finally finished tears in his eyes.
"What? What is it?" I asked slipping closer to him. Sirius' emotions were all over the place and he looked as if he had seen a ghost.
"Do you know who it is?" Harry asked looking excited and nervous.
"Regulus Arcturus Black, my brother."
AN: Please Review!