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Part Seven

"This is bad. This is really bad."

Harry bit his lip so that he wouldn't say No shit to Sirius. He knew that Sirius was just trying to help.

Even though it didn't seem possible that anything could help Eustace, who was sprawled out on the bed in his room, breathing shallowly.

Harry had never been in Eustace's bedroom before. It honestly didn't look too different from the library; most of the walls were shelves, filled with tomes that had silver and gilt lettering on the spines. There was a desk with a chair in front of it in one corner, looking through a window that gave a good view of a pond on the grounds, and closed doors to the left and right that Harry imagined led to the bathroom and a cupboard.

But it was the bed that was the center of everyone's focus at the moment. Harry leaned in slowly, studying the dark line creeping up Eustace's arm. Of course, he had done that before, and it probably wouldn't tell him anything new. He wasn't a Healer.

"Potion."

Eustace's lips barely formed the word, but Theo pounced on it, which Harry couldn't blame him for. "Yes, Father? What about a potion? You want us to get you one for the pain?"

"No. Potion. Binding."

Theo turned and darted out of the room. Harry hesitated, then stayed by Eustace's side. He would probably just slow Theo down if Theo knew what he was looking for and Harry didn't.

Besides, if these were Eustace's last moments, Harry wanted to be there to say goodbye.

Theo came back with a book that looked as though the title had been deliberately rubbed off, and cracked it open on the edge of the bed. It was huge, easily the span of his arms, but Theo didn't seem to notice as he flipped through the thick parchment pages. Then he stopped on one and nodded frantically, his eyes scanning the words.

"What is it?" Harry demanded, leaning over his shoulder. He couldn't make sense of most of the words on the page, and not just because they appeared to be written in some older form of calligraphy than he'd learned to read.

"The curse can be bound in the affected limb," Theo said. "It needs the blood of someone who's related to the sufferer. A binding potion. Simplest one there is, the kind we used before we started really creating potions that would have complex results." His words flew as he tugged up his sleeve. "Black, go get a Blood-Replenisher."

Sirius hesitated, but Harry gave him a stern look, and he turned and ran away, thank Merlin. Harry, meanwhile, leaned back closer to Eustace, and waited.

"Accio cauldron."

There was a clang, and a cauldron came soaring out of the cupboard and landed on the edge of the bed, too. Theo's voice was clipped as he said, "Harry, conjure water please. I need to concentrate."

Harry drew his wand and cast Aguamenti, although his hand was shaking so much that some of the water soaked the bedsheets. Eustace, his head lolling to the side as the blackness raced across his shoulder, didn't appear to notice.

Theo cast a charm Harry didn't hear on his upper arm, and it began to bleed profusely. Harry swallowed. He thought he could actually see bone and muscle through the cut, and he wanted to beg Theo—

But this was his father. If he wanted to do this to save his father, that was his right.

Theo's blood flowed into the water, and then Theo said something, a single harsh word that Harry couldn't grasp even though he heard it. The water-and-blood mixture began to bubble as if it were sitting over a fire, and then Theo picked up the cauldron and slung it all over Eustace.

Harry realized he had his mouth open. He closed it again.

Theo leaned against the bed for a moment, panting so hard that Harry reached out and put a hand on his arm. Theo nodded, but didn't acknowledge that Harry had touched him beyond that. He straightened and said in a croa,. "Father. Can you hear me?"

Harry looked at Eustace. He was sitting back up now, and his breathing seemed slower than it had been. He nodded at Theo and held up his arm, turning it back and forth. "You have bought us time, my son."

Harry sucked in his breath. The black line had curled up Eustace's arm and down his shoulder towards his chest, but Theo's potion must have hit Eustace just in time. The blackness hadn't actually ventured out towards his heart.

"Oh. Good," Theo said, with a bright smile, and then he pitched forwards on the bed.

"Theo!"

"Accio Blood-Replenisher!" Eustace said with a flourish of his wand, and there was a startled yelp from down the corridor where Sirius must have been holding the vial as it zipped into the room. Eustace tipped back Theo's head and forced the potion into his throat, snapping at Harry, "Bind his arm."

Harry scrambled to obey. His movements still felt slow with shock. He didn't know exactly what Theo had done, except that it had saved Eustace's life, and it could have killed Theo. And he didn't know what to do now, other than bind Theo's wound.

Sirius came trotting in with more Blood-Replenisher and a faint look of indignation on his face. "You could have waited until—"

Harry seized the potion from Sirius and forced more of it into Theo, ignoring the way his godfather huffed. A second later, Sirius eased up beside him, seemed to see how pale Theo was, and calmed down with a wince.

"Is he going to be okay?"

"He will be fine," Eustace said, and held up his arm, glaring at the black line on it. "I think I know now what the artifacts the Dark Lord has hidden are."

"Good?" Sirius said.

Eustace ignored him and spoke to Harry. "The potion Theo used is a brew that can only be created of pure water and the blood of a family member. I apologize for not having the time to explain that to you when my son made it. I know you care for him, and that any injury to him is distressing to you."

Harry folded his arms and glared. "I care about you too, Eustace. I trusted that Theo knew what he was doing, even if I didn't know what that was."

Eustace stared blankly at Harry for a long moment as if he had lost the ability to understand English. Then he said, "Thank you," in an oddly quiet voice.

"You're welcome."

"It's great that everyone feels cherished, but what is that thing?" Sirius interrupted, flinging his hand out to point to the black line on Eustace's arm. "What kind of curse? I've never seen it before."

"And you're an expert on curses, Black?"

"With my childhood, I should be."

Eustace pinched his nose with his good hand, and then sighed. "The curse is a flesh-wasting one that the Dark Lord once demonstrated for us. I think it would have killed me quickly, but the magic in it was confused by the magic of the Dark Mark. Someone who touched the ring without the Mark would not have that protection. And Theo has bound it within my arm, but not got rid of it."'

"So what happens now?" Sirius demanded.

"Now? In a few years, I will die. Perhaps a few months, but I do not think so, given the way that the curse feels contained.:

"No," Harry whispered. It felt as though the room had begun to pivot around him. "You—you can't die in the pursuit of fighting my enemy."

"He is my enemy, too, Harry, because he would be the enemy of my son. Crouch showed that." Eustace's voice and eyes were gentle for the first time since Harry had met him. "And I should have taken more precautions, myself. The ring had a compulsion charm on it that snared Theo, but I could have drawn my wand and used a Knockback Jinx or many similar spells to remove him from danger. Instead, I foolishly knocked his hand aside with my own. I did it, and now I am paying the price of it."

"But…"

"There isn't a cure?" Sirius asked, his voice subdued.

"You said yourself that you weren't familiar with the curse, Black. No, there is no cure. The Dark Lord invented it and was very proud of it, saying that there was no way for someone unfamiliar with the magic to heal it."

Harry swallowed. "You won't look for one?"

"I will look for one." Eustace lifted a hand. "But that doesn't mean that I will find it. And I would rather spend my time researching these artifacts of the Dark Lord's. I believe I know what they are, now."

"What?" Sirius demanded.

"The magic in the ring made me feel as if I were standing in his presence. It must contain not just his power, but a bit of his soul." Eustace's eyes glittered. "It is a Horcrux."

The word meant nothing to Harry, but Sirius staggered as if he'd been hit. He reached out as if to put a hand on the wall, only he was too far away from the walls, and he just ended up dropping the last vials of Blood-Replenisher on the floor. "No," he whispered.

"Yes."

"What's a Horcrux?" Harry interrupted. "I've never heard the word before."

"You would not have. There are no books in Hogwarts outside the Restricted Section that would discuss them, and I had no reason to give you the books from my library that do." Eustace shook his head. "It is an artifact created through a ritual murder, which tears the soul of the killer and places the newly-made shard inside the chosen object. It is a means of anchoring the soul to the world, and thus, a form of immortality."

Harry's spine prickled, and he swallowed several times. Then he said, "So you think that he made several of these?"

"At least two, the ring and the diary. Who knows how many more?" Eustace closed his eyes and let his head droop back on the pillow behind him, and Harry winced as he realized how much strength Eustace must have been using just to keep himself upright. "That is what I want to spend my last months doing. Hunting down the Horcruxes and destroying them."

"I thought you hadn't figured out a way to destroy the diary, yet," Harry said, to keep his mind away from the words last months.

"I could make little progress when I had no idea what it was. Now?" Eustace chuckled, a sound like steel claws rasping over more steel, and Harry felt briefly sorry for Voldemort. "Now I can research Horcruxes. There are books here that do speak of them, although not many."

"I want to help."

"And I want you to comfort my son," Eustace said. "Ensure that the Nott legacy continues past my death. I do not know of anyone who could do that so well as you could. Give Theo something to live for."

Harry closed his eyes.

"I need to rest," Eustace murmured. "Take Theo and put him to bed, please. Heidi!"

The Nott house-elf Harry knew best appeared and held out her hand to Harry. "Master Harry will be taking Master Theo so he can rest," she said firmly.

Harry let her take Theo, but continued looking over his shoulder at Eustace as Sirius herded him out of the bedroom. Eustace had his head bowed, his lips moving. Harry wondered if he was reciting the properties of Horcruxes to himself or something.

He wants to make his death matter.

Harry shuddered. He could understand the impulse, but the far better thing would be if Eustace didn't die at all.

Sirius cleared his throat awkwardly as they lingered on the landing outside Eustace's room. "I'm sure that he'll be—some version of all right, Harry. We'll find some way to turn back the curse, or something."

"Could he cut off his arm?" Harry asked, looking up at Sirius.

Sirius hesitated. Then he said, "I don't know what this particular curse is, but if something is wound enough in his magic to cause that kind of damage, it would probably just show up again in another part of his body."

Harry nodded. His eyes burned.

"Go to bed now, Harry." Sirius's hand swept his hair gently back from his forehead.

Harry turned and staggered off to do just that.

"Do stop hesitating in the doorway and come in, Theodore."

Theo swallowed and walked into the dining room. Father looked up at him with sharp eyes from the other side of the table. There was a stack of letters in front of him, more than he usually got in a month.

"What's that?" Theo asked, nodding at the envelopes, since it was a way to avoid talking about the long dark line that looked as if it were cleaving his father's right arm in half.

"Correspondence that I'm receiving from some of the people I asked about Horcruxes. I assume Harry told you about them?"

Theo nodded, a little nauseated. He'd run across the word before here and there, not enough to know all the details, but enough to know that if the Dark Lord had made as many of them as it seemed like…

"There is another matter regarding Horcruxes that we must deal with at the moment."

"Yes, Father?"

Father shoved aside the letters, frowning when the swollen fingers on his right hand knocked some of them to the floor, and waved his wand to float them back up. Theo slipped into the chair opposite his father, and then froze at the way he was pinned under a searing stare.

"It was not your fault."

Theo squeezed his eyes shut. Harry had been with him for most of the night and morning, and Theo hadn't been able to share what he felt worst about.

"If I hadn't fallen for the compulsion charm and reached for the ring…"

"If I hadn't reached for it myself, simply trying to get my hand in the way, and instead used my wand like a proper wizard, I would not have been cursed. It is far more my fault than yours."

Theo swallowed. He hadn't thought of that, but he still felt that he should have resisted the compulsion charm.

"If I am to die," Father said, and his eyes were like a hawk's, "then I would prefer that I not do it while you are blaming yourself, and perhaps will be careless in the future, in situations where I am counting on you to survive."

Theo nodded slowly. "All right, Father."

"So you will stop blaming yourself?"

"If you tell me how long you think you have to live."

"A few years."

"Not a few months."

"No. You bound the curse strongly enough that you stopped it from growing, and the Dark Mark confuses it, since part of the Dark Lord's magic is buried in it, much as his magic is buried in the ring Horcrux. You did well, Theo."

Theo found something in himself uncoiling like a snake. He should still have been faster and not grabbed at the ring when he knew they were in the shack to hunt a Dark artifact, but at least he had saved his father's life.

"You told Harry all this already?" he asked, reaching for the scones and butter in the center of the table. He had slept through most of the night and hadn't had a chance to eat anything since yesterday afternoon. Now it felt as though his stomach was opening like a flower.

"Yes. And I think that he will stand at your side and help you conduct the hunt for Horcruxes if I die and they are still unaccounted for."

"We need to find them, but we also need to know how to destroy them."

"I know one method. But it is the kind of spell that I have not taught you because I thought you might not be able to master it."

Two years ago, Theo would have bristled at that. But now he had seen how Father had trusted them with so much: responsibly combining their powers, capturing Crouch, and learning the kinds of spells that most parents would have refused to teach until their children were older. He could put up with a few concerns.

"Will we learn it now?" he asked, swallowing a mouthful of perfectly warm scone.

"Yes. Although it might be one that you will have to cast together. Even practicing it alone could mean that it gets out of control."

Theo felt his eyes widen. "You mean—Fiendfyre?"

Father blinked once, then sighed. "Of course you would pick up on that, my little Ravenclaw. Yes. Because Fiendfyre can destroy everything it is cast at, it stands to reason that it would destroy a Horcrux."

"It seems that he would have protected them against that."

Father gave a mirthless smile and held up his blackened hand. "I imagine that he thought the protections on them sufficient."

Theo swallowed down the protest that he wanted to make, nodded, and went back to eating his breakfast, his mind racing ahead with projects for the rest of the summer. Mastering Fiendfyre would have to come first, but of course he and Harry should also study the nature of Horcruxes, and try to find out what kind of objects Voldemort would have valued, and they would have to contribute some time to studying for their OWLS—

He might have felt overwhelmed, but someone moved in the doorway of the dining room, and he looked up. Harry stood there, smiling at him, a hard version like Father's smile.

Theo held out his hand. Harry came in and sat down, clenching his fingers around Theo's before he turned to look at Father. Theo squeezed back.

Together, we can do anything.

"I got a letter from Remus yesterday."

"Did you?" Harry asked absently. "Huh. He hasn't written you before, has he?"

"No." Sirius gave a long sigh. "Harry, can you please look at me when I'm talking about something this important to me?"

Harry turned around with an apologetic smile. He'd been busy working on the runic pattern that he thought might increase their mastery of Fiendfyre, sprawled out on the floor in the middle of a Potions lab that Eustace had thoughtfully converted into an experiment room. "Yeah, I'm sorry. What did he say?"

Sirius looked at the runic pattern on the floor and shook his head. "I don't think anyone's ever tried to master Fiendfyre with Runes before."

Harry shrugged a little. "Well, I can be the first. What did Lupin say?"

Sirius uttered a gusty sigh for some reason, but reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out a much-folded letter to extend to Harry. "You can read it for yourself. He asked that I give it to you if you had any interest."

Harry skimmed through the letter more than read it. Most of his mind was on his project. But he did see that Lupin was talking about how Dumbledore had contacted him and asked him to join—rejoin—something called the Order of the Phoenix, and how that would help them defeat Voldemort. Harry nodded. "It would be good to have more help in the war."

"I thought you didn't like Lupin."

"Not personally. But he could still be useful. I don't like Fudge, either, but he's busy being a useful tool right now."

Sirius stood still, searching Harry's eyes with a gaze so intense that Harry didn't think he could turn back to his project. Sirius took a quick little breath a few times, like he was going to say something, but he didn't. Harry waited patiently, his mind running through the next rune combinations he wanted to try.

"You're so calculating," Sirius whispered at last. "You don't let personal emotion come into any of it, do you?"

Harry was so surprised that he laughed, only a little annoyed when the runes in his head scattered. "Of course I do. I was glad to see Pettigrew arrested for what he did to you. I boiled the surface of the lake to get Theo back. I'm furious about what happened to Eustace, and I'll take down Voldemort for everything he's done."

"But you don't—you don't like Lupin and Dumbledore. But you can work with them."

Harry shrugged. "They haven't done anything as bad as Voldemort or Pettigrew or Crouch. Neither has the Minister. We'll do what we have to do to win and make ourselves safe, and if some people want to contribute to that, they can."

Sirius blinked and then reached out for Lupin's letter. Harry gave it back to him. Sirius carefully rolled it up and stared at Harry for a moment.

"What?" Harry asked. He wanted to listen to what Sirius had to say, he really did, but he also wanted to get back to his runic diagram.

"You're not like anyone else I've ever met," Sirius said. "Not like a Slytherin, not really, but also not—why are you so pragmatic?"

"That's the way I have to be. To survive."

"I wish you hadn't had to be," Sirius whispered hoarsely.

Harry leaned forwards and hugged him. "I know, but this is the way I am now, and I wouldn't really change it for anything. I wouldn't have got to know Theo and Eustace if I wasn't pragmatic. Now, how much do you know about using runes to charge a spell?"

Sirius knew little, but he was excited and flattered to be involved in the project, and if Harry could give him books and get him to do research, it kept him out of the way. Harry, meanwhile, dived back into the diagram, carving runes into the stone of the floor and then stepping back to look at them from different angles.

He was going to figure this out, so that when he and Theo finally cast Fiendfyre, they would be able to do it without any danger.

And he knew, without asking, that they would destroy the ring first, for all that the diary had been in their possession for a longer period of time. There were some things that Harry wasn't pragmatic about, and revenge was one of them.

"We both knew that there was a chance we wouldn't manage to destroy the ring before we had to go back to Hogwarts."

Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. Theo sat down next to him in the train compartment, close enough to crowd Harry against the window. Harry blinked and turned to stare at him.

"Do you think I feel this less than you do?" Theo demanded, lowering his voice. "He's my father, Harry."

"I know. I know he's only my guardian—"

"That's not what I meant. Only that you aren't alone in this, and you shouldn't act like you are."

Harry bit his lip for a moment, and then nodded. "You're right. I was being selfish." He shook his head and sat straight up. "But what kind of research do you think we'll be able to conduct at Hogwarts?"

"I thought Father told you? He's going to lean on Professor Snape to give us a Restricted Section pass. We might be able to get one from Vector or Babbling, but Father didn't want to take the chance in case it didn't work out. And there are people who have worked at the school since Riddle was there and can tell us more about his childhood and the kinds of artifacts he might have been interested in."

"Who's worked there that long? Besides Dumbledore?"

"Professor Sinistra is a lot older than she looks, and—"

"Harry!"

Harry turned around and unleashed a bright smile on Weasley and Granger as they entered the compartment. "Hello! How were your summers?"

Theo settled back with a small sigh and reached for a book in his trunk. He hoped that Padma would show up soon, but even then, they would have to speak in disguised phrases in front of Weasley and Granger.

Yes, it was Harry's business if he wanted to keep these Gryffindor friends. And it was Theo's if he didn't feel that he could ever speak freely to them because of their "principles."

He caught Harry's eye, and Harry gave him a grim, determined, diamond-bright smile.

At least Harry is willing to work with me to do whatever it takes to rescue Father.

"Mr. Potter? If you could stay after class for just a teensy moment?"

Harry turned around with a polite smile, and waved a hand to Theo near the hem of his robe, silently indicating that he should go on ahead. "Of course, Professor. You wanted to speak to me?"

"I did, I did!" Dolores Umbridge, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, beamed at him and adjusted her necklace of pearls. "It will take just a teensy moment more."

Harry nodded and waited with his hands clasped behind his back. He knew Umbridge was here only because Dumbledore hadn't been able to find a Defense professor. Apparently he'd actually written to Lupin about it, wanting him to come back, but Lupin's lycanthropy had been exposed, and too many parents wouldn't stand for it.

Umbridge was probably also here to keep an eye on Dumbledore and Harry for Fudge, who wasn't brilliant but was untrusting after so many scandals in the Ministry, and to further her own political ambitions. It didn't really matter. Harry knew how to handle her.

"There, there," Umbridge said, after shooing out Michael Corner, who'd lingered to ask her a question about the book. "Now, do you have another class after this one, dear?"

"Transfiguration, Professor Umbridge."

"Well, we will certainly not want to make you late for that! Not with Professor McGonagall as stern as she is."

"Yes, Professor Umbridge."

"I will give you a note in case our conversation runs longer than that. Do sit down, Mr. Potter."

"Thank you, Professor," Harry said, and took a seat at the same desk he'd chosen during the class. Umbridge stood in front of him, simpering.

"Now," Umbridge said, and her voice became even more breathy and fluting, to the point that Harry couldn't imagine how anyone took her seriously, "you might be wondering why I wanted to talk to you. In the interests of time, I will tell you directly. There are people in the Ministry who are questioning your support of Minister Fudge."

Harry widened his eyes. "They are? Well, I want to stop that if I can, Professor Umbridge! What do I need to do?"

Umbridge giggled. Harry could see now how not taking her seriously could work against the people who did it. "The simplest thing would be if you were willing to speak with someone who can get the message out to the public that you support Minister Fudge and his search to find the traitors in the Ministry who caused such a lax atmosphere. It was laxness that led to poor wretched Bartemius holding his own son prisoner in his house instead of turning him over for justice. You see?"

"Of course, Professor. You think Rita Skeeter might help?"

Umbridge's smile became wide and red and sticky and positively indecent. "She was just who I was about to suggest. Do you think she would be willing?"

"I think so, Professor. We've never spoken, but I think she would be happy to talk to the Boy-Who-Lived, right?"

And Eustace will limit what she can say in any event.

"Of course, of course!" Umbridge clapped her hands with a soft sound. "I must say, Mr. Potter, you're not who I was expecting based on the events of last year. I must say that many people in the Ministry thought you were a cheater."

She was watching him closely for some reaction, but Harry just gave her a bland smile again. It was so easy. The opinions of these people only mattered in that he had to manipulate them instead of outright ignore them, the way he had the people saying he was a cheater last year. "Well, I think many people are still blinded by their image of what I ought to be like, you know, Professor? They think I should be some Gryffindor, some risk-taker. One of my Gryffindor friends did say that he would have loved to put his name in the Goblet, but, well, that's not me." Harry shrugged a little. "I'm a Ravenclaw and a practical person and happy to be so."

Another soft sound as Umbridge's hands came together. "Well said, Mr. Potter, well said indeed! I look forward to a fruitful collaboration with you."

"Professor," Harry said, with a faux respectful nod of his head, and left the classroom. He had enough time to get to Transfiguration if he used a fast walk.

Theo was waiting for him, for all that Harry rolled his eyes fondly as they set off together. "You didn't have to do that. No reason for both of us to lose points."

"Neither of us is going to. What did she want to ask you about?"

"She just wanted to know if I would make a statement in support of Minister Fudge. Preferably by speaking with Rita Skeeter."

Theo gave a thin smile. "And you said yes?"

"What reason would I have not to?"

Theo laughed a little. "True."

They rounded the corner and walked into McGonagall's Transfiguration class just as she opened her mouth to start speaking. McGonagall gave them a hard stare as Harry and Theo nodded to her and sat down in desks near the back of the classroom, but she turned away a second later and started talking to Hannah Abbott, near the front, instead.

Theo bent diligently over his parchment, something that didn't surprise Harry, but he was a little surprised when Theo slid the parchment over to him as they began the practical work. It wasn't notes, but a detailed list of questions that Theo thought would be good to have Skeeter ask.

Harry smiled as he read through them. Eustace would be the one to give Skeeter most of her directions, but it would be good to have some input into the process.

Both to make sure that he was staying in control of his image, and because of what he might need to do when Eustace was gone.

Harry took a deep breath and forced away that thought. Now was for Transfiguration. He would work on everything else, including Eustace's possible death, later.