Notes: I wanted to thank everyone for their reviews. I got a couple of ideas from them that made writing this chapter much easier.

Chapter Three

The elf stopped hiding and became visible in the room. Except for the filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, it was completely naked. It looked very old. Its skin seemed to be several times too big for it and though it was bald like all house-elves, there was a quantity of white hair growing out of its large, batlike ears. Its eyes were a bloodshot and watery gray, and its fleshy nose was large and rather snout-like. Harry could feel the insanity coming off the tiny humanoid, and it made him shudder.

"Master calls for Kreacher?" He asked. Then, far less quietly than he thought he was being, he said, "Nasty thing that he is."

A house-elf saying bad things about his master? Even Dobby, whose master had been vile and abusive, had not been able to say such things!

Sirius virtually growled. "Enough of that, Kreacher! I have some new orders for you. First, you will never repeat, show, or write anything you see, hear, or read in this house to another witch, wizard, elf, goblin, or any other being or creature. The same goes for paintings. And if I find out you have somehow circumvented those orders, you will not only be punished, you will join your ancestors on that wall! Do you understand me?"

Kreacher curled his snout-like nose at the order, but said, "Kreacher understands."

"And second, you will stop saying bad things about the guests of this house and about me."

Kreacher looked like he might try to fight the order, but in the end his own magic forced him to say, "Kreacher understands. Anything else?"

"Not now."

The insane elf popped away, and Sirius shook his head. "Sorry about that, Harry. He was always my mother's favorite elf, and he's practically in love with her portrait that hangs in the hall. Unfortunately, while I was in Azkaban, both she and my brother died, and he's been in this house, alone, with no company but that portrait, who has a few screws loose herself, and a bond with me. Both he and my mother hated me, so it's not good for him to be bonded to me, but we can't let him go or he'd instantly blab everything that goes on here to our enemies." He sighed. "I almost think it would be kinder to kill him than make him continue to serve me."

"How sad," Harry said.

Dumbledore nodded. "Yes, it is. However, we should continue with our actual purpose. Harry, now that we're more secure, please tell me what is going on with you. I truly feared the Minister and his lackies would have managed to get you to violate the Underage Sorcery laws and attempt to get you expelled for it. Yet somehow you have managed to avoid even their notice of it."

Harry nodded again, but the Force was still screaming at him to be circumspect, and he listened. I've been having nightmares since the Third Task, and Hermione told me about a mental art she had heard about called Occlumency that might help me. I also wanted to get fit, and since everything that happens to me seems to involve fighting, I thought I would learn something that would help me in the future, so I've been learning martial arts, including the sword. Of course, I don't have sword, so I used a Muggle broomstick. When I started combining the mental and physical training, I started being able to see magic. When the Dementors came, this was already in my hand. Latin for sword is 'gladius', so I made a leap with 'gladius patronum'." He showed them the makeshift Bokken, and the stag burned into it by the Patronus. "I haven't tested this on anything else, so I don't know what else it will cut, if anything. Somehow I doubt it, since it's got a chunk of wood up through the middle. But I guess that a Patronus being the only thing that can hurt a Dementor, it was able to do that job against them."

Both Dumbledore and Sirius were staring at him, processing everything he'd said. Sirius recovered first. "That's amazing, Prongslet!"

Dumbledore said, "What made you think this would work? I've never heard of anyone using Occlumency in this way before. You're able to touch magic that isn't already a part of you!"

Harry shrugged. "Let's find out, shall we? Gladius Patronum." Obediently, the Patronus Saber formed along the broomstick.

Dumbledore looked at it and drew his wand, running a series of scanning spells over the energy blade. "Amazing! It reads no differently than a corporeal Patronus would. This is a fantastic achievement, Harry."

"In all honesty, the meditation and physical fitness part of my training has been the most important. It's helped me to deal with what happened during the Third Task, and the nightmares have gotten a lot better. I may hope that this will give me a weapon against Voldemort in time, but for now, it's still mostly about my mental health."

He didn't tell Dumbledore about his new ambition to become a Jedi, nor of writing books or possibly opening his own school when he was older. He didn't tell him of the many abilities the Force might grant him with time and training. He ce3rtainly didn't tell him that he could see the magic of the wards even before being granted access to them. Something told him he wouldn't like what would happen if the Headmaster ever found out about the Jedi, or about Harry's plans for the future.

Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Fred and George had all been left upstairs in the bedrooms they'd been assigned while the meeting was going on, and now they were all in the kitchen for dinner. Harry greeted all of his friends enthusiastically, having missed all of them over the summer of isolation, though he understood.

Fred and George, who were now seventeen and allowed to do magic outside of school, had nearly killed Harry with the soup cauldron and Sirius with the bread knife while an iron flagon of butterbeer skittered across the floor because they tried to levitate everything instead of moving it by hand, and Mrs. Weasley berated them as loudly as possible. "FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!" she screamed. "THERE WAS NO NEED—I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS—JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE ALLOWED TO USE MAGIC NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO WHIP YOUR WANDSOUT FOR EVERY TINY LITTLE THING!"

"We were just trying of save a bit of time!" said Fred, hurrying forward and wrenching the bread knife out of the table. "Sorry Sirius, mate—didn't mean to—" Sirius was laughing uproariously, and didn't appear to hold anything against the twins.

"Boys," Mr. Weasley said, lifting the stew back into the middle of the table, "your mother's right, you're supposed to show a sense of responsibility now you've come of age—"

"—none of your brothers caused this sort of trouble!" Mrs. Weasley raged at the twins. "Bill didn't feel the need to Apparate every few feet! Charlie didn't Charm everything he met! Percy—"

She stopped dead, catching her breath with a frightened look at her husband, whose expression was suddenly wooden. Everyone was dancing around the fact that Percy wasn't there. Harry knew the former Prefect was working for the Ministry, and you didn't have to be a Jedi to realize he'd hurt his family badly with his attitude. The subject was quickly switched to the food and all of the cleaning that had been going on over the summer.

But Mrs. Weasley was very upset with Harry for going into the Order meeting and said so. "You are too young to be involved in the Order, Harry! It is the job of the adults to fight this war, not yours."

"First, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't tell them what I know, and Professor Dumbledore asked me to be there. Second, to quote a story Hermione read while I was in the infirmary once, 'Those who have not swords can still die upon them.' I and the others may be too young to run off into battle against the Death Eaters, but we must be given what information will help us to defend ourselves against them." He shrugged. "Otherwise, when the battle comes to us and we are unprepared, we will surely die."

"Well said, Harry," Sirius said.

"You stay out of this!" sniped Mrs. Weasley. "It's not your decision!"

"Of course it is. He's my godson! I'm responsible for him!"

"And look how well that turned out! He's not James, Sirius!"

"I'm well aware of who he is, Molly."

"I'm not sure you are! Sometimes, the way you talk about him, it's as though you think you've got your best friend back!"

"Mrs. Weasley," Harry interrupted, "that's enough." He stood with a serious look on his face, well aware that what he was about to say was not going to go over well, but just as convinced that it needed to be said. "I think a great deal of you but berating a man in his own home for fourteen-year-old mistakes, or how he deals with his own family is just not right, and whether you like him or not, Sirius is my family.

"I know that you're afraid. Everyone in your family is in Gryffindor, so of course they're brave and they want to fight against what's coming, and you're afraid you're going to lose them all." He gave her a small smile, softening his faced. "I'm afraid of that, too, and other things. But we can't let fear take us over. I've been told that fear becomes anger and anger becomes hate. You can't let that happen to you." He paused to gather his thoughts, then said, "You know Riddle's just going to keep coming after me. He's made it abundantly clear that I'm at the top of his to-kill list, and your children have aligned themselves with me as my friends. Do you want them to meet the Death Eaters with Jelly Legs Jinxes and Stinging Hexes? Do you not want them to know when he's coming, when that will mean he kills them?"

Mrs. Weasley teared up and fled the room. Harry felt horrible for her, and maybe a little ashamed for having said what he did. Mr. Weasley had, of course, heard the entire exchange. He sat back with a sad sigh. "Thank you, Harry. I don't think any of the adults or our own children could have said that to her so she'd actually hear it."

"I didn't mean to make her cry."

"I know, Harry. You didn't hurt her. It was the truth that did that, and unfortunately it was unavoidable, because you're right." He sighed again. "Fred and George have been angling to join the Order, and when she told them no, they and the younger ones all started spying on the meetings whenever they could get away with it. They have the blind spot of not realizing what you were able to see, that she's afraid. All they could see was that their Mum was trying to wrap them in wool when they wanted to fight."

Arthur turned his eyes to the other children at the table. "You all listen carefully. Harry is right about this. I know Dumbledore said not to tell you young folks any more than you need to know, but I don't think that means leaving you completely ignorant. You need to know that the Minister is planning to scupper your education at Hogwarts, especially in the area of Defense Against the Dark Arts." Hermione gasped at the very thought of someone damaging her education. "He's convinced himself that all this You-Know-Who business cannot be real and must therefore be a power grab. He cannot conceive of someone not wanting to be Minister, so these thoughts merged into that conclusion for him. And because this is what he believes, he thinks Dumbledore will somehow mobilize the students against him. This is what we have gleaned from the Daily Prophet and other sources within the Minister's office. We should have confirmation of it when the school lists come out, because it'll show up in the book list." He shrugged. "Forewarned is forearmed, and Dumbledore needs to realize that as much as Molly."

Harry pondered that for a while, then said, "How are we getting our school supplies this year? I'd imagine with the increased security you won't be taking everyone down Diagon Alley?"

Remus piped up, having tried to stay out of the family drama. "That's right."

Harry asked him, "Do you remember all of the books you used when you taught us?"

"Of course, Harry. Do you want the list?"

"Yeah." He grinned. "Mr. Weasley, other than the prescribed schoolbooks, I would like to purchase one of each of the books on that list. Well, I still have the third year text. But all the others. Charge them to my account, too."

Hermione grinned at him. "That's brilliant, Harry! We can study the right thing even if they try to teach us badly."

After dinner Harry was shown to the room he'd be sharing the rest of the summer with Ron, and after a while, all the younger set snuck into that room so they could all talk to Harry. Hermione beat everyone to the obvious question. "How did you beat the Dementors without alerting the Ministry?"

"I know you only gave me the Star Wars book to show me that the underdog can win against massive odds, but I couldn't help but think about the Jedi." Harry pulled the makeshift Bokken once again and showed them the Patronus Saber.

Ron said, "Wicked!"

The twins were virtually salivating.

Hermione said, "Really, Harry, that's absolutely amazing! So, because you didn't use your wand, it didn't set off the Trace. But—"

Harry said, "I'm going to become a Jedi if I can, Hermione, or at least come as close as I can."

Ron said, "What's a Jedi?"

Hermione said, "A fictional warrior monk who uses a power called the Force to augment his physical and mental abilities. And Harry seems to be able to duplicate some of the effects. Strategically it's perfect. The purebloods won't know a thing about Star Wars, so they won't know what you're doing. But Harry, will it really work?"

"I don't know yet. Some of it does, but I've been leery of testing much while I was at Privet Drive. Dobby managed to get me in trouble before second year and no one even touched my wand. Now that I'm here, however, I'm going to try a few things. For one, I need a place to keep working out. I don't want to lose all the progress I've made."

"We might be able to convert one or two of the extra rooms into a gym or something. But there's still some serious cleaning that needs doing first. This place is infested with various pests and dark things!"

Harry nodded. "I'll talk to Sirius about it in the morning. But let's do a test right now." He took a knut out of his pocket and laid it on his bed. Then he did what he hadn't yet dared. He not only touched his magic, but directed it to reach out, touching the knut, and pushing up beneath it so that it rose into the air. His wand was in his trunk, and he hadn't even whispered a spell. This was pure Force. And it worked just fine, until he lost control of it and the knut went off at high speed and lodged itself into the door. He gulped. "I think I know why Professor Flitwick starts firsties off levitating feathers."

Hermione looked at the knut, and said, "Harry, I know this is going to be a lot of work, but—"

He smiled. "You want to try?"

She shook her head. "I want to do it. I want to become a Jedi, as well."

That made him grin. "Then you will."

The next day, Harry was shown around the house by Sirius. There were ten bedrooms and three bathrooms, the kitchen and dining room with an attached pantry, the drawing room, the attic and basement, the library, and finally a small ballroom. The back garden had once been home to a greenhouse and patio, but though the skeleton of the greenhouse remained, the glass had been destroyed and a large Devil's Snare had taken over the framework, eliminating the back garden as a safe place to work out. Sirius said, "I think we could fit your gym into the ballroom. I can build you some equipment to use since you can't go outside here, and I can check your Occlumency shields at some point." He chuckled. "I've never heard of anyone using Occlumency to learn wandless magic, Harry. You sure are something special."

"Thanks, but a lot of this is going off of guesswork and intuition. Well, that and intent. With magic, intent is everything, as you know." Then he proceeded to tell Sirius about his intentions of becoming a Jedi. "I may not be able to duplicate every facet of the books, but I'm going to do all I can."

Sirius nodded. Without warning, he struck, attacking Harry's mind to test his shields. Harry stumbled with the force of it, but quickly pushed his godfather out. Nor was he physically idle during the exchange, drawing his Bokken in a smooth movement and swiftly twisting around to smack the wood painfully into his right knee. Using that distraction, Harry fired off a stinging hex, quickly followed by an incarcerous and a disarming hex.

Even though he was in pain and trussed up in the ropes from Harry's wand, Sirius began laughing. Harry waited, his senses now fully open and his shields strengthened, fighting his sudden spike of anger. He didn't feel any real threat from the man, but that didn't explain why he'd thought such an attack was warranted. When the laughter subsided, he said, "Explain."

"Sorry, Harry," he said, still jovial. "But it wouldn't be a real test if you knew it was coming. You did pretty well, though, for only a couple of months, and with written instruction alone. Tell you what, when you go back to Hogwarts, ask Professor Flitwick if he wouldn't mind helping you. A lot of Ravenclaws use Occlumency to order their thoughts for better memory and retention. And it should definitely help with your 'Force' thing."

His anger dissipated, and he nodded. But he decided a little revenge was in order, so he not only left Sirius in the ropes, he colored his hair Slytherin green and stuck his wand up a tree where the Devil's Snare couldn't get at it, but neither could Sirius. "Have fun getting out of that." Then he went back inside, and Sirius had to be let loose by Tonks.

It took two days to finish the gym, but Harry was glad to get back into his routine. He advised Hermione to begin slowly by running half a mile for the first three days and introducing her to calisthenics. He showed her how to meditate and the beginnings of Occlumency. The two meditated together often. Hermione was working toward touching her magic, while Harry was learning how to control how the Force flowed through him so that he could levitate things without destroying them or sending them into orbit.

It worried him that sometimes it was easier to control after he got frustrated.

He told Hermione about his bad feeling about Dumbledore, as well, wondering what could be causing it, but neither of them could figure it out. They decided just to be cautious until they knew more.

When they weren't working out or studying, they were helping with the continued cleansing of Sirius's house. It had been empty for several years before Sirius had volunteered It as the meeting place for the Order at the end of last school year, and things had been breeding in the absence of adequate maintenance. Things like doxies, a type of fairy with a nasty bite. One of the rooms they were cleaning was the drawing room, which not only had more doxies than they had been expecting, but a massive display case which had all sorts of nasty things in it. Most, to Harry's view, had some amount of darkness clinging to them. But one, a heavy gold locket with an emerald encrusted carving of an "S" on the front, out did them all. Its dark miasma seemed to reach out and barely touch each person who got close to it, as if it were tasting them, before retreating back into the mass of blackness. Worse, Harry knew it was not his eyes which were picking this up but only his Force senses. The others didn't even know what it was doing!

And Harry's scar seemed to itch a bit when that tendril touched him. That was all he needed to be convinced that this was something of his, possibly something like the diary which had possessed Ginny in her first year at Hogwarts.

Mrs. Weasley, who was supervising the cleaning of the drawing room, asked him, "What's got your attention, Harry?"

"I think we need Dumbledore in here. Maybe Bill, too. That locket—" He shuddered. Now that he was drawing attention to it, the thing's darkness seemed to grow, just a bit. It made his skin crawl.

"Now, Harry, there's no need to bother—," Mrs. Weasley began.

"Please don't dismiss this. It's dark, it's dangerous, and it needs careful handling. I can feel it."

Hermione took one look at Harry and noticed how pale he looked. "Mrs. Weasley, you know all the trouble Harry seems to get into? Well usually it's because the adults won't listen to him and he barrels in to take care of it himself, that's if an adult hasn't thrust him into the situation in the first place. Harry, what's it feel like?"

He nodded gratefully to her. "It feels like the diary."

Now that made the entire room go still. There was no need to ask what diary: every person in the room knew what he was talking about. The diary of Tom Riddle, which had housed the memory of his sixteen-year-old self, had nearly killed Ginny in a bid to return to life. Ginny ran from the room without another word, her face transparent with fear. Molly was suddenly not so dismissive. "Fred, there's a lead-lined box in the kitchen. Go and get it. George, get to the Floo and call for Dumbledore. Ron, get Sirius. Harry, Hermione, come to the other side of the room."

Now that made the entire room go still. There was no need to ask what diary: every person in the room knew what he was talking about. The diary of Tom Riddle, which had housed the memory of his sixteen-year-old self, had nearly killed Ginny in a bid to return to life. Ginny ran from the room without another word, her face transparent with fear. Molly was suddenly not so dismissive. "Fred, there's a lead-lined box in the kitchen. Go and get it. George, get to the Floo and call for Dumbledore. Ron, get Sirius. Harry, Hermione, come to the other side of the room."

Everyone scrambled to do as she had commanded. Molly might coddle her children, but she was quite capable of taking command of a situation once she realized it warranted it.

Harry watched what followed with macabre interest. Sirius came in with Ron and was told what had been discovered in the cabinet, including the background of just what the diary had been. He called Kreacher and asked him if he knew anything about the locket, and they learned the horrible truth about Regulus Arcturus Black. By the end of the tale, Dumbledore had come in and heard the story with wonder. Sirius had to sit down, tears rolling down his cheeks. Nor was his the only face that wasn't dry, but it was his brother, his own brother, who had left the Dark Lord and gotten one over on him. Kreacher wanted to destroy the thing, as that was Regulus's last command, and because it had killed him. But he had been unable to even open the casing.

Harry mused, "If it's an heirloom of Slytherin, could it have a Parceltongue trigger?" All the people in the room, which now included Bill as well, looked at Harry. "Well, he made the diary when he was sixteen, and the diary wanted to be opened. This one doesn't, and it was probably made later in his life. What better password than one no one else can speak?" There was much nodding at the logic of it. "Professor Dumbledore, should we take it down to the Chamber of Secrets? We know basilisk venom will destroy it once I can get it open."

Kreacher looked at him strangely, and Harry felt a spark of hope flare in his tiny chest. "Nasty halfblood can do this?"

Kneeling down to be at eye level with the elf, Harry said, "If it is as I have guessed, I can get the thing open. I can take us to Slytherin's Chamber, where I killed Slytherin's basilisk. Even if the snake has decomposed, there should still be venom in the fangs."

Dumbledore said, "That is an excellent idea, Harry. However, if I may modify it, call the Sword of Gryffindor. As you used it to kill the basilisk through the mouth, you punctured the venom glands. The sword is goblin steel, which absorbs anything it contacts which will make it stronger."

Harry looked at him strangely. "How do I go about doing that?"

"My research says you should only have to call it by name with the intent of drawing it. Having pulled it out of the Hat, it will already know and hear you."

Harry focused on doing just that. He focused his need in the same way that he focused on a good memory for the Patronus. He felt the Force begin to stir around him, ready to answer his summons. Then he just said, "Gryffindors Forward." He felt the summons spring outward, fast as light. And given that the distance between them was only five hundred miles, it arrived in his hand almost instantly. Quickly adjusting his grip so that the sword didn't accidentally cut anyone, Harry stood up.

Bill had finished his examination of the trinket. "It's a Horcrux, all right."

All but the three fifth-year students gasped. Hermione asked quietly, "What's a Horcrux?"

Not waiting for Dumbledore's approval (which he probably wouldn't have gotten), Bill answered her. "It's a container for a piece of someone's soul. They commit a murder as part of a ritual, using the natural damage that murder does to a soul and completing the cut, as it were. The piece is placed in the prepared container, and as long as it exists, the person cannot be killed fully. You can destroy their body, but with the proper ritual, they can be returned to a body and a full life. They're some of the vilest, darkest magic out there."

Harry said, "Voldemort started making them when he was sixteen. He used the Basilisk to kill Myrtle Warren and made a Horcrux out of his diary. That's what nearly killed Ginny in her first year. The Horcrux in the diary was sapping her soul to make a body for itself." He shook his head. "So he made that one and he made this one. I wonder how many times the fool split his soul." Dumbledore stiffened, and Harry looked at him. He shook his head, and Harry narrowed his eyes. Dumbledore's tendency to keep secrets was really irritating. But he was well aware that the locket was now affecting everyone in the room. They were starting to get irritated, and that would soon bloom into full anger. Best to leave the rest of the discussion for after the thing was dead.

By this time Bill had levitated the locket into the waiting lead box, which enabled them to carry it without touching it. "I imagine this thing isn't going to go quietly. Let's take it out to the back garden." Then he looked at Kreacher. "You should come with us."

Kreacher nodded vigorously, then followed the entire company out of the house and into the garden. Bill dumped the locket out onto the dirt. "Everyone should step back. This could get a little explosive."

Harry stepped forward, but the Force whispered to him. "Kreacher?" The elf looked up at him, and Harry carefully handed him the sword by the grip. "Don't touch the blade. It's poisoned. I'll open the locket and you stab it. You finish the task Regulus set you."

Kreacher's look turned to awe. "Kreacher will do!" Then with determination gleaming from his eyes, he turned to face the locket, the very embodiment of his failure to obey his master.

Harry threw as much behind his Occlumency shields as he could. He asked Kreacher, "Ready?" At his nod, Harry addressed the locket. "§Open.§"

The locket sprang open with a little click. Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome as Tom Riddle's eyes had been before he turned them scarlet and slit-pupiled. A wave of evil emerged, thick and cloying, but invisible. "Kreacher! The elf who failed. You cannot destroy me! Nothing can!" For a moment, Harry feared Kreacher would not complete the task, but with a roar out of place coming from such a high-pitched voice, the elf crashed the point of the sword through the hated eyes of his master's enemy. The locket screeched as the enchanted and poisoned blade slammed through it, and then it was silenced. The evil presence vanished, like a mist beneath the morning sun, and they all felt lighter for it.

Now that I've cleared a few things from my schedule, writing has a much greater place than it did.