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Chapter Eleven—Various Plans

Harry sits on the Astronomy Tower and lets the wind blow through him.

He's up here alone. No friends, no Sirius, no Salazar. No Ahalam. Nothing except himself and the cold wind that still carries the smart bite of winter even though the weather below is turning to spring.

Harry sits there and tries to come to terms with carrying around a piece of Voldemort's soul.

Of course it explains more than it doesn't, like the dreams that Harry finds hard to fend off even with Occlumency and the pain that scorches him when Voldemort is near. But explanations aren't really what Harry feels like thinking about right now.

He sits, and the wind blows through him, and scrubs him clean.

He feels dirty—dirtied so much that he shakes with it. How long has he been carrying around that bit of soul?

Of course, as soon as Harry thinks that, he feels stupid. He knows the answer. Since that Halloween night when Voldemort tried to kill him. He's been this thing, which Sirius says is called a Horcrux, much longer than he's just been a normal kid.

Panic tries to build up, but Harry stares up at the stars and breathes in the wind, and finally he calms down enough to think about it.

He's not possessed. Sirius reassured him vehemently of that, and Harry's pretty sure of it, too. He's not trying to possess other people, like the diary. He's not corrupt and stinking of evil like the locket and the diadem, or someone would have noticed what he was much earlier. The Dursleys certainly would have mentioned it.

He is—

He's something that still has to be destroyed to get rid of Voldemort's immortality.

Harry closes his eyes. That's what he's been trying to avoid thinking, but now, with the wind picking up to a good old howl and the stars blazing cold above him, he can't avoid it any longer.

What is he going to do? He has to die.

He doesn't want to die. He wants to live.

But so does Voldemort.

Harry buries his forehead in his knees, feeling like he's about to start breathing impossibly fast. But it doesn't actually happen, fear and exhaustion hovering around him but not coming out. Harry shudders and curls into a smaller, tighter ball.

It can be put off for a few years, he thinks. It will give them time to research what to do about Horcruxes other than stab them with a basilisk fang. Maybe they'll manage to move the shard out of him. Maybe they'll come up with a way of destroying it that Harry can survive. Stab him with the basilisk fang and have Fawkes cry on the wound?

That didn't get rid of it last time.

Harry breathes out. The thing is, he can't keep this to himself. He has to tell some of his friends, at least. They would know that something was different the moment they spent some time around him and Sirius, anyway.

But he can keep one thing to himself.

The determination, wild as a thestral, welling in him that if worst comes to worst, if they can't do anything else and can't find a way to remove the Horcrux…

That he'll die.

He wants to live. But he wants to protect his friends more.

"Are you finally going to tell us why you and Black have looked like something's broken in your souls for the past week?"

Harry flinches before he can stop himself. It's Theo's wording, not his tone or the fact that he's asking the question. Harry already called his closest friends here, to a version of the Room of Requirement covered with wards, to announce that he's a Horcrux.

Theo, being Theo, reads his face and is out of his chair on the opposite side of the small table in seconds, his hand on Harry's shoulder. "What is it? My lord?"

Harry closes his eyes and retreats inwards for a moment, then takes a deep breath. He can't give in and lie down and die. He can't make jokes and brush this off. But on the other hand, he can't just act like a lord.

"Please don't call me that right now, Theo."

Theo watches him with wild, wondering eyes for a moment, and then inclines his head. "Harry, then. What is it? You're frightening me." His eyes dart to the door of the Room, but right now, he and Harry and Ahalam are the only ones here.

"The intense boy is being very intense. What is wrong? Does it have to do with the dog-man? What can the best and prettiest snake do to help?" Ahalam touches Harry's neck with the end of his tail. "Can it be solved with cheese?"

"I'm sorry," Harry says to Theo, "I didn't mean to, but I'd rather only tell this once, so I'm going to wait for the others." He says to Ahalam, "No, it can't be solved with cheese."

"It is a mighty problem! Tell me what the problem is, and I will help you with it. And then perhaps we can have cheese afterwards."

"I'll tell you in a bit," Harry promises, eyes on the door of the Room, where Sirius is entering now. Ron and Hermione are right behind him, giving Harry worried glances, and Susan follows them.

The others seem surprised when Ernie joins them, but Ernie looks a little defiant. Harry just waves him to a chair. He's become close to Ernie since they started Occlumency lessons together, and Ernie has seen some of his worst memories. He deserves to know this, too.

And because it's not impossible that the Horcrux could attack Ernie now that he's entering Harry's mind and seeing some of his memories.

"Sirius found a book that talked more about what the diadem and the locket are," Harry says, and some of his friends look around nervously even though the Horcruxes aren't here right now. "They're called Horcruxes—"

Theo hisses like a snake someone has stabbed. Harry nods to him. He's the only one here who grew up with that kind of Dark Arts, other than Sirius, and Harry isn't surprised he recognizes the word.

"They're containers for someone's soul."

Hermione is the one who turns the palest, but Susan is the one who whispers, "They're containers for parts of his soul? He split it? That's awful."

Harry nods. "Sirius thought that another one of them might be hidden at Hogwarts, since the diadem was. He found a spell that would allow him to find the containers. He cast it." He swallows.

"It's the school!" Hermione says.

"It's you."

Theo's voice is completely flat, and so is his face. Harry nods without attempting to say anything to comfort Theo. There would be no point. "Yeah," he whispers. "Yeah, it's me. My scar. Voldemort put a piece of his soul there the night he tried to kill me on Halloween, in 1981."

Ron makes an awful choking sound that Harry never wants to hear again. It's as bad as Sirius's crying was, in some ways. He reaches out a trembling hand. "Harry, if you are—if you can—"

"We don't know what to do," Sirius says, in a rush, leaning over the table and slapping his hands down on the surface. "We know how to destroy the others, but we—I don't know what to do, I don't know if there's ever been a living Horcrux before, if Harry can even live if we get rid of it when it's been in him so long—"

"There must be something," Ernie says. Harry has never heard him so upset before. He's wide-eyed and pale and sweating. "There must be—I don't understand all portions of this situation, but there must be—"

"No."

Theo's flat voice steals the voices from the others. Harry shifts and blinks at him. Theo stands still, arms folded, glaring at him. Harry raises his eyebrows. "What?"

"I know you have a plan in place that involves destroying yourself to destroy the Horcrux," Theo says. He's still and cold, and for the first time around him, Harry feels a prickle of fear. "That's not going to happen."

"Harry, you wouldn't—"

"You couldn't, not really—"

Harry bares his teeth. He didn't intend to say anything about this, because he didn't intend for anyone to find out, but now he has to. "If it came down to choosing between my own life and yours?" he asks, eyes locked on Theo's for a moment before he looks around the table at everyone there. "Yeah, I would. In a heartbeat."

"No."

Theo speaks like someone three times his age, his voice calm and quiet and still. Harry sighs and puts his head in his hands for a moment. "I would always choose your lives over mine," he says. "That's the way it is."

"And what makes you think we should agree with that?"

"Because that's the way I want it, and you've supposedly sworn an oath to me and also are my friend?"

Theo recoils without moving. Harry tugs on his hair and ignores Ahalam's hisses of concern from his shoulder. "Sorry," he mutters. "That was rude. But—I don't know what else to do, Theo."

"Look into moving the Horcrux into something else. Look into different ways of destroying the Horcruxes. Look into ways of disembodying the Dark Lord and capturing his spirit in something else, rather than dying."

Harry blinks at Theo. "I did think about the first two things. I'm willing to try and find ways. I'm not just going to—march off to my death."

"And the last?"

"We have to kill him, Theo. We can't leave him alive."

"But if he can never get out—"

"How would we know he can never get out?"

"We don't know how to do any of these things yet," Sirius interrupts in a loud voice, and Harry jumps. He didn't realize how intense his argument with Theo had got. "But we might find ways to do them. So don't just—promise us that you won't run off and do something rash, okay, Harry?"

"I don't want to do something rash! I want to live! It's just that I want you to live more."

Sirius reaches out and hugs him, the flash of tears in his eyes. Then he takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "Listen to me. We are going to investigate, and that means doing careful research. Even though the kind of books we'll have to read won't make life pleasant for anyone," he mutters, only halfway under his breath. "No one is going to make any decisions until we know for sure what those decisions have to be, okay?"

Harry nods, because he's perfectly willing to wait and do research. His idea of dying to save them is just a last-ditch idea.

It's just that he has to face it. Has to make his own peace with it before he does it, if it ever becomes necessary.

He glances around, and gets a nod from Ernie. Ron is watching him with a face so pale that he looks like a murder victim, all his freckles standing out on his skin like drops of blood. Hermione is sniffling, her head buried in her hands.

Theo and Susan are whispering furiously to each other.

Harry narrows his eyes at them. Susan glances up, catches him looking, waves, and goes right back to whispering with Theo.

I wish I knew what the hell that was about. But in the end, no matter what they plot and plan, Harry will have to be the one to make the final choice.

That's part of what being a Lord is. If he claims the title and the privileges, he has to be willing to pay the price.

"You're not going to die."

Harry sighs and turns around. He sort of expected this, after Theo's opinions on the conversation, but he didn't expect Theo to come up to him while Harry was on the Astronomy Tower, once again wrestling with his thoughts.

"If I have to, I will."

"You won't have to."

Harry narrows his eyes. "And how do you know that?" he asks quietly. "We still don't understand all the minutiae of the prophecy, Theo, and we know that a basilisk bite doesn't destroy the Horcrux in me."

"We shall arrange it." Theo looks almost angelic with his faint smile and the wind blowing his dark hair back. "You don't have to worry about it. Susan says you should worry more about your O.W.L. exams, in fact."

Harry half-shrugs. Tests and studying feel very far away right now.

"Don't worry, my lord. We won't let him kill you."

Harry frowns at Theo's back as his friend turns and trots away. He wishes he knew what Theo and Susan were planning—but then again, he's pretty sure that it won't work no matter what. The prophecy says he has to face Voldemort. No one else.

All I can do is lessen the cost for them.