Harry hadn't seen either Seamus or Parvati all summer, but he'd been nervous only about one of those two people.

As it turned out, it had been the wrong one.

Parvati was fine. She smiled at Harry, and asked him about his summer, and he tried desperately not to blush as he thought of Draco and then asked her in turn just to get the conversation away from that, and she tld him about her time in Mumbai with her family, and how they'd gone travelling around India, and how much she'd enjoyed some of the places she'd seen. "I swear Kaziranga is the most beautiful place on Earth," she told him, and Harry nodded and listened to her enthusiastic descriptions and felt relieved.

Seamus, on the other hand…

It seemed that being at home only with his parents – and only his mum was a witch – and reading the Ministry's propaganda had got to him, and now he seemed convinced that Harry had only experienced a prank in the graveyard and that he'd never been in any danger at all.

Dean seemed deeply uncomfortable with his best friend's claims. He'd trained dedicatedly the whole summer, and he was the only one from a non-involved family Harry knew who seemed to take the danger seriously enough. But then again, Sophie never took anything seriously.

Still, the gap between the people whose families were involved in the war and whose weren't was getting bigger every day.

At least, that was, in Gryffindor. Daphne was apparently under no illusions about why her parents banned her from seeing Draco and Theo this summer, and when Harry went to talk to them, he saw the desperate way she was looking at Theo. Draco was away in the prefect compartment with Pansy at the moment – a choice of prefect that was truly mystifying – so it was just him she was focusing on.

Theo had always been quiet, but now he was grimly silent in a way that made Harry's stomach turn. After a while of sitting in the Slytherin compartment, he just couldn't take it any more, and he nodded at the boy to accompany him outside to the corridor.

"Are you all right?" He asked. Then he rubbed his eyes. "Stupid question, sorry, I know you're not, but just..."

"Do you have good memories of your father?" Theo asked him in a hollow voice.

Harry, surprised by the turn of the conversation, shook his head. "I don't really have any."

"But you heard stories. About how he was a hero, right?"

"Well...some," Harry admitted, thinking of Hagrid and Sirius and Remus. "But I also heard a lot about how he wasn't all that great."

Theo looked at him for the first time when he said that. "Then maybe you can understand," he said, "but then again, you haven't had to see it."

Harry grimaced. "No, thank Merlin," he said.

"I never had too many illusions about my dad, I thought," Theo said hollowly, "but this summer...well." He shook his head. "It was...hard."

Harry swallowed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm..." suddenly he felt like such a prat for being pissy with Alduin for sleeping with Melania when his own wife didn't even care. What business was it of his? Alduin gave everything he could to help Harry fight the war, to prepare him to defend himself, when he could have left him to rot at the Dursleys. Meanwhile, Theo's dad was teaching him Dark magic.

He decided, there and then, to write to Alduin and apologize for how he'd treated him over the summer. For now, he turned to Theo and asked: "Can I do anything? I know it's not really fixable, but..."

"Just...I've heard that you were teaching Defence to Gryffindors last year. Would you...consider including me? I want something to...counterbalance what I did over the summer."

Harry thought about the Ministry flunky who'd be teaching Defence this year, who was likely to be rubbish, and he thought of the warnings Alduin would surely give him about teaching someone with such a close ties to the Death Eaters, but looking at Theo's face...how the hell could he say no?

"Yes, of course," he said. "I'll let you know when we start."

-hp-hp-hp-

Something had been itching at the back of Alduin's brain since the Shafiqs had visited, but he couldn't figure out what it was until his first letter from Harry.

The day after Harry's departure for Hogwarts, Alduin received a letter from him that detailed the first impression of Umbridge as a Hogwarts teacher – about as bad as Alduin had expected she would be, perhaps even a little worse – and also Harry's rather stilted apology for how he'd acted over the summer, acknowledging that he'd been out of line.

Alduin was honestly chiefly relieved.

He hadn't known what to do about the situation, except to stop seeing Melania, which seemed a little too much like caving to a tantrum. He'd consulted Nathan and Nathan had told him that this was simply what teenagers were like, and implied that it had lasted about two years with Maurice before it got better, a deeply alarming idea,

So Harry apologizing after only two months was a relief, even if it was possible that the problem would reappear once they saw each other again.

For now, however, it seemed they were fine, which was certainly good, because Harry would need all the support he could get in the following months and years, and Alduin wished to offer what he could, but he wouldn't exactly force it on Harry. This made things easier, for all they'd never truly be easy.

Contemplating Harry and the difficulties of the war, and the Horcrux in him and the nightmares it was giving him, was what finally made the itch at the back of his brain resolve.

The Horcrux in Harry, the connection Riddle was very clearly unaware of still - and the Shafiqs determining that seven was the best number.

Something they knew from Slughorn's memory Riddle knew, too.

But he didn't know about the connection to Harry, which meant he didn't know about the Horcrux in him. Very possibly, he thought the last spell had failed with his destruction, or that whatever object was created there was identified and destroyed by Dumbledore. Perhaps not, but…there was a very real chance that Riddle would try to create another Horcrux, which would mean they had another one to destroy before they could even attempt the one in Harry.

There was a sense of relief about that which he couldn't deny, but still. He needed to talk to Dumbledore as soon as possible.

-hp-hp-hp-hp-hp-

Harry had expected the Ministry flunky to be bad, hut he hadn't expected her to be that bad. He listened carefully to her speech at the Welcoming feast, and was horrified by the implications. He was even more horrified by his first class with her.

He'd expected the teacher to be merely incompetent, but it seemed not teaching them anything was actually a part of a plan this year. She simply assigned them a chapter to read and they spent the whole class just...doing that. Reading the chapter. It was mind-numbingly boring, and at the end Umbridge, the new teacher – if the word could even be used for her – quizzed them on it, and that was that.

"I didn't think there could actually be a worse teacher than Binns," Parvati muttered once the class was over, "but this just takes the cake."

Harry shook his head. "I think Binns honestly doesn't know better," he said. "She's doing it on purpose."

"You reckon?" Ron asked.

"I'm pretty sure," Harry confirmed, looking around to make sure she wasn't listening before he went on, "Alduin warned me about her, and I mean, she is the Minister's Undersecretary. Whatever you think about Fudge, she wouldn't have made it that far if she was really this incompetent."

Harry got further insight into the wonder that was Umbdrige on Wednesday at Runes, where he met Hermione, who was still fuming. Apparently she'd asked Umbridge, during their class the previous day, if she ever intended to tech them any practical magic, and she'd flat out told her that she thought studying pure theory would be enough to pass even the practical part of the exam. "And this is our OWL year," Hermione hissed. "Our whole future depends on how we do on those exams, but no, we get saddled with a Ministry flunky for that!"

"I'm more worried about the actual war that's going on," Harry muttered sardonically. "Could be useful to be able to defend ourselves, don't you think?" He thought of his plans to teach his friends, and thought they really should have the first class as soon as possible, and maybe even include more non-Gryffindors than just Theo.

"Yes, of course," Hermione muttered, "it's just...well, we're not likely to be a part of that all that soon, you know? But the OWLs, well, they're at the end of this year."

Harry could only think he wished he could at least believe he wouldn't get into another dangerous situation before the school year was out.

He began to make plans for the first training meeting in his head, but before that could take place, he had his first Occlumency lesson with Snape.

He was not looking forward to that.

"As your cousin has no doubt told you," Snape began when Harry settled at one of the desks in the empty Potions classrooms, the Pensieve with his private thoughts before him, "this is an extremely complicated art and only very few people can truly master it. And Gryffindors, in general, seem to have the most trouble with it, as wearing your feelings on your sleeve seems to be something of an honoured practice for you. Under normal circumstances, I could adapt the methods I teach you to that, focusing on pushing people out of your mind rather than masking your true thoughts, a method that more open people tend to find easier. However, given your particular situation – give that we need the Dark Lord to not realize that he has access to your mind – that road is closed. I am not certain you can learn the other way. Nevertheless, I will try. Have you been practising emptying your mind before bed?"

"I have," Harry replied, and then added under his breath, "with varying success."

Snape sneered at him. "Let's see how you did, then," he said and pointed his wand at Harry. "Legilimens."

-hp-hp-hp-hp-hp-

Alduin's interview with Dumbledore turned out to be extremely unsatisfactory.

The man had thanked him for the warning, and promised to pay detailed attention to Snape's reports to try and determine whether there was a new horcrux, but insisted that telling Snape to look for it was too dangerous, that he spent too much time with Riddle to confide such secrets into him.

Alduin understood his point, really, but...this was simply too important to rely on Snape mentioning it offhandedly in a report.

And so Alduin headed home like a good boy – he knew the portraits all reported to Dumbledore, after all – and then arranged a meeting with Snape for a different time and place.

In fact, he had Snape come to the Manor one evening, and welcomed him with a pot of tea and and an apologetic look. "I am sorry for dragging you all the way here, but I dare not discuss this at Hogwarts, and nowhere else can I be certain of being secure."

"This concerns war, then, not Potter."

"I wouldn't ask you here for him, though I will certainly be glad you if can spare a few words about his Occlumency progress. First, however..." Alduin hesitated for a moment, but he'd thought ti through and there was no point in obfuscating – much. "It concerns the way Riddle gained immortality. I don't know if you deduced it?"

Snape gave him a long, considering look. "A horcrux seems the most likely," he said at length.

Alduin gave one sharp nod. "For reasons I will not go into, we have some relatively solid suspicion that he might have made another one after coming back."

Snape did look shocked at that. "More than one Horcrux?"

Oh my sweet, naive child, Alduin wanted to say – which was entirely unfair, because it was not as if he had not been shocked when he'd first learnt of it. "It appears so," he simply confirmed.

"And I presume you want me to find it?" Snape said after a moment.

"I will be content with knowing you are keeping your eyes open for any such thing – no need to risk an active search. It is absolutely crucial he does nto learn we know about them – the reason why Dumbledore did nto wish me to tell you in the first place."

Snape scoffed. "There are nto that many reasons to make oneself immortal, and really only one – that I know of – that is consistent with what we have seen."

Alduin shrugged. "Perhaps the reason why he decided to have more than one, no?" He suggested. "No one would expect that."

"Well, that's certainly true," Snape muttered. "And I suppose that him knowing you know about them could lead him to make even more," he added after a moment, "which we would certainly want to avoid."

"Precisely," Alduin agreed. "So, keep your eyes open, if you would. We have reason to believe that he would tend to precious objects of great magical power and with long and famous history, though even that is not set in stone, of course. If he hid it somewhere, you would likely not know, but if he decided to keep it close to him to be secure...or if he gave it to one of his most trusted followers for safekeeping...well, that would give you a chance to spot it, I hope."

Snape inclined his head, then sat in thought for a moment before saying: "I am afraid there is nothing so far. The only thing he truly keeps close to himself these days is his new pet snake, and I haven't seen him give anyone any special secret missions, or heard about it. But I will, as you said, keep my eyes open."

Alduin thanked him and bid him goodbye soon after, listening to his report on Harry's progress – which was effectively non-existent – with only half an ear.

Most of his mind was focused on one question only: a new pet snake – was that, in fact, a possibility?