"When you feel as though there is nothing left,

where do you go?"

Kingsley Shacklebolt sighs as he looks out the window at 12 Grimauld Place. Rain pummels the plate glass relentlessly as he tries to sort through the mess that has become the Order's life. Harry has become belligerent with anyone who tries to question him and it is stalling any plan that they could come up with to counter-attack Voldemort. Turning back to the crowd that he had momentarily forgotten about, he clears his throat, "Now explain to me again, Harry... what happened while you three were on your own? Why were you on your own? And why did you attempt to break into Gringott's?"

"What does it matter? Nothing matters. Ron's dead and Hermione was the one who killed him, Kingsley!" The Boy-Who-Lived exclaims as he throws his hands in the air, "It isn't like it will bring my best mate back!"

"You must understand, Mr. Potter," Minerva states calmly from her chair by the fireplace, "We need to know what exactly Albus had you three doing before this situation occurred. Maybe it has something to do with what happened to Hermione."

"What Professor Dumbledore had tasked us to do has nothing to do with how Hermione acted... it was all that bitch's fault!"

"Language, Mr. Potter," Professor McGonagall says, her voice raising slightly.

"Who is this other woman you speak of, Harry?" a teary-eyed Molly questions as she tries to follow everything that the young wizard is trying to explain to them.

"Who do you think?!" Harry seethes as he glares around the room, "Bellatrix Lestrange!"

"What did my sister do to Hermione?" Andromeda asks, fear etching her voice, as she comes out of the kitchen with a pot of tea and several cups trailing in the air behind her.

"She had to have done something to her! Hermione would have never turned on us if it weren't for your sister! She must have Imperiused Hermione while we were at Malfoy Manor!"

Arthur Weasley shifts uncomfortably on the leather sofa and stares at the dusty piano beside him, "Can you please tell us what happened at the Malfoy's, Harry? You keep changing the subject every single time we bring it up. You tried to explain to me what happened while you were at the Burrow, but certain events happened that kept you from telling me." Sighing with frustration, the patriarch of the Weasley family turns his gaze to the young wizard, "Now Harry... you have to tell us everything. I know it hurts, but you must understand, we have to know what happened. You didn't just lose a friend that day, we lost a son and have every bloody right to know what happened to him." The older wizard's face turns a deep shade of red as he stands and moves towards the window, hoping that the rain will have a calming effect. Staring out the window, Arthur watches as the rain continues to wash the colour out of the background and to cause it to swirl and contort into malicious spectres of every sort of possibility that could have happened to his youngest son in his last moments. As he closes his eyes to block out the thoughts, he sees that he can not escape the torment of the thoughts, no matter how hard he tries. Wiping his eyes as stray tears slip past the barrier he thought he had created, the older wizard sighs, "Look Harry, we just need to know what happened. We could care less why Dumbledore sent you three on a mission. We could..."

"Well, I most certainly care, Arthur!" Minerva retorts as she glares at the man over her half-moon glasses, "Albus had no right sending three children on this sort of mission. They are entirely too young to be used as fodder against someone like You-Know-Who. They could have been killed because of Albus's secret keeping. We should have known about their operation, at least one of us should have been privy to this information to keep them safe. That way we could have carried on if the inevitable were to happen, which it seems to have happened. Hermione, if my guess is correct, was the brains of this outfit," the young wizard stares at his professor with disgust at her assumption that he and Ron could not have done what they did without the young witch. Minerva saw his eyes boring into her, but continues on, "And without her in the equation, we are back to square one if Mr. Potter here does not inform us of every little detail that Albus gave him. Also, if I must take a guess at what had happened while they were guests at the Malfoy's, I would say that they were possibly tortured. Is that true, Mr. Potter?"

"If Bellatrix and Narcissa were a part of this, there is no doubt that Hermione suffered greatly under my sisters' care... especially Bella's," Andromeda states quietly as her daughter, Tonks, runs a comforting hand over her mother's shoulder, "I remember when I first started dating Ted while we were still in Hogwarts... Bella found out about it and instead of running to our parents, like Narcissa did, she and Enyo cornered Ted in the library, near the restricted section, and tortured him. I had run back into the library when I saw them rush in. He was retrieving a book I had left on our table that I needed for my Transfiguration homework. Ted had insisted that he would go back in to get it... he was gone for only a few seconds when they walked passed and I knew that something was wrong. By the time I had entered the room, they had their wands drawn and Ted was on the ground. He was nearly unconscious when they finally stopped and then Bella kicked him over onto his back and told him that he shall never place his filthy mudblood hands on a member of the Ancient and Noble House of Black again," the Black sister looks at the rest of the group and sighs. "She had thought he was taking advantage of me... she thought that he had some sort of spell on me, she never realised that I had willingly dated him. Not until I ran away to marry him that is. To this day, I still wake in the middle of the night hearing her threats and his screams echoing in my head and I wonder, if someone else had came in to stop it, maybe it would have never happened. If only they had been punished for using such dark magic in the school..." Andromeda looks at Minerva, "Why didn't Albus do anything to stop such a thing?"

"Mother..." Tonks says softly, "Don't do this to yourself. Not now. We need to focus on what is at hand."

"We would be able to focus on what is at hand, if Harry would just tell us everything!" Kingsley gruffs out, his patience with The-Boy-Who-Lived wearing thin, "Look, like Arthur said, we could care less what you, Ron, and Hermione were looking for, but by Merlin, boy, tell us what happened! And you need to tell us now!"

Harry sighs in defeat as he stares at the people in the living room. The only two people out of the whole group that did not verbally attack him when he walked into the room were Tonks and Remus, but he suspected that Remus would open his mouth to say something once everyone else had taken their turn first. Taking his glasses off and pretending to clean them allows him to take his time to answer the group in front of him. How was he to tell them all that he doesn't know exactly what had happened to Hermione during their time within the Manor and how was he to know what exactly happened to Ron after Hermione had Apparated from Gringott's? This was the reason why he did not want to speak to them all yet, he did not want them to see him as someone who overreacts in stressful situations. Placing his glasses back on, he takes a deep breath and stares back at all the people who were waiting for him to speak. "Look... I can't tell you what Dumbledore wanted us to do, he said that only I could do this mission. Hermione and Ron joined because they said that they would not allow me to do this on my own. I trusted them to help me and it cost Ron his life," he glances at Molly and Arthur Weasley. Molly buries her head into her husband's shoulder when he mentions Ron's name and Arthur grimaces at the memories of what happened at the Burrow a few days before. "We were camping out in the woods while looking for these objects that the Headmaster said would destroy He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. While we were out there, we did not know that He had made His name taboo and I said it out loud. Suddenly, Snatchers were everywhere in our camp. They knew exactly where we were even though we had charms set about the whole camp."

He cradles his head in his palm as he takes another deep breath, "I remember following Hermione as we were chased by them. I remember hearing Ron cry out as he stumbled to the ground. He had been hit with an incarcerous spell. I kept following Hermione along this path in the woods littered with fallen trees... now I almost feel as though she did it on purpose."

"Did what Harry?" Kingsley questions softly.

"Hit me with a Stinging Jinx," his hand instinctively reaches for his face to check if the swelling from a week ago had in fact went down. "We were nearly surrounded by the Snatchers and instead of trying to make it through this wide opening between a large tree and a boulder, she turns around, apologises and hit me with a Stinging Jinx. Next thing I know, we are all three being dragged towards the large gates of a mansion. I didn't know at the time that it was Malfoy Manor until I saw Bellatrix in front of the gate waiting for us. We were brought in to one of the drawing rooms and had to wait for Draco to see if he could identify me. He seemed confused when he came in... when he stared right into my eyes, I could tell that he knew who I was but was afraid to tell his family that it was me. It was almost as if he was trying to save us or something. Bellatrix didn't believe him though. She made her sister take Ron and me into the cellar and kept Hermione upstairs with them."

"What happened next, Mr. Potter? Did you hear anything that happened upstairs while you were in the cellar?" Minerva asks as she moves forward in her chair, carefully hanging on every word the young man spoke.

"I really couldn't hear anything. I heard murmurings, but other than that nothing. Once I thought I might have heard a moan come from Hermione, but I didn't hear anything spoken between anyone while we were trapped."

"How did you get out?" Tonks queries from her perch on the arm of the armchair her mother sat in.

"Dobby appeared out of nowhere. He told us that he had came to help us out of there. I told him to get Luna and Ollivander out of the cellar first and take them some place safe. Ron suggested that he take them to Shell Cottage where Fleur and Bill were so that they could take care of them and I agreed."

"So you mean to tell me that you sent two witnesses to a house with no protections whatsoever with a house-elf, that I might add had been in service to the Malfoys before you had freed it and thought that they would be safe?" a voice sneers from the hallway. Severus Snape stalks into the room and Harry blanches at the sight of the Potions Master, "Of all the stupid things to do, Potter. The Dark-Lord could have had spies all around the cottage and every single one of you could have been slaughtered."

"No one knows about Shell Cottage!" Harry retorts as rage ripples across his face. He turns towards Kingsley and spits out, "What's he doing here?"

"Like it or not, Potter, I am a member of the Order of the Phoenix and the only person who can help since you do not wish to tell everyone what Dumbledore had told you... something that the Dark-Lord is now privy to since Hermione has joined His ranks." A smirk settles on his lips as he reveals the last part of his statement. "So are you are you going to tell everyone about the Horcruxes? Or shall I?"

The room erupts in pandemonium as the thought of the use of such dark magic enters everyone's minds.

"You have to be joking, Severus," Minerva exclaims as she gathers her senses before the rest of the group, "With magic this dark at His disposal, how can we ever defeat Him?"

"Dumbledore said he believes that He was using school artefacts as Horcruxes and that we should look for those items. Hufflepuff's cup was supposed to be in the Lestrange vault and we had already taken out Slytherin's locket. The sword of Gryffindor was not used as a Horcrux, it can actually destroy them since it is imbued with basilisk venom, but Hermione had it in her bag. The only thing we are missing is the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw," Harry says defensively as he looks about the room.

"But it has been lost for centuries!" Tonks cries out as she stares at the young wizard, "No one alive knows where it is!"

"No one alive may know where it is, but what about someone who is dead?" Kingsley questions as he stares at the dwindling fire, "Maybe Helena Ravenclaw could shed some light on this conundrum."

"There is no way any of you can go into Hogwarts now," Snape says with a snort, "or have you all forgotten that it is now in the hands of the Dark-Lord?"

"They may not be able to go in, but you and I can Headmaster Snape." Minerva says with a smirk, "I think we can put our heads together and come up with a plan that can finally rid the world of You-Know-Who."

"I don't like this," Severus states glumly as he looks out of the window, watching the rain continue to pour down upon the world outside.

"You may not like this, but we have to do this for the sake of the Light," McGonagall retorts as her eyes bore into the back of Snape's head.

"Well, if we are to do this, Minerva, I suggest we go ahead and plan out what needs to be done."