Harry felt an inexplicable sense of comfort as soon as he got his hands on the Diadem. That in itself was probably deeply concerning on some level, but it wasn't a level he could currently contemplate. Whatever was planned for tonight, whatever nightmare, there was nobody Harry could trust except himself to guard the Horcrux. If Harry left it - him - alone, if he got himself killed in the rush of whatever scheme had taken Malfoy the year to carefully execute, each Voldemort would snap. After Second Year, Harry wasn't stupid enough to assume all the Diadem could do was sit around and whisper sweet nothings. If a Horcrux got a corporeal form, the War was lost. Those were the simple facts and the cold, hard truth.

Even though it made him sick to think it.

There was a note on his bed, ink splattered hastily on parchment. He instantly recognised Hermione's neat handwriting, the flourish on her 'Y's and 'M's.

If we're not back by midnight, you were right, and something's happened. Love, H.

It was twenty past. They had to be alive, if only because Voldemort assumed - correctly - that he could use them as leverage. Harry had probably not listened to a single demand this Voldemort had made of him in his life, but he'd been ramping up the amount of blatant disobedience past interstellar and into infinity as of late. It was bound to have driven Voldemort's blood to the boil, and he'd be ecstatic to get his hands on anything that would drive Harry into doing as he was told. Though, only if he managed to catch them, and Harry would never hesitate to give his friends the credit they deserved. They'd been doing this a long time, now. Running. Hiding. Hoping for the perfect opportunity to strike.

He had to tell Dumbledore he was right. He suspected Dumbledore already knew that, but they were mobilising at that very moment, and if Ron and Hermione weren't here, then the Death Eaters must've infiltrated the castle. He had to get to Snape's quarters; whatever catastrophic change in plan Dumbledore was attempting to save him from was irrelevant if everyone was dead.

"Neville," he called. "Something's here, here in the castle. I've got to go to Dumbledore before it gets out. Watch the dorms for me, yeah?"

"You think they'd make it to the dorms?"

"I think it's possible they'd make it anywhere," he said, and rushed out.

The hallways were the throat, and Harry was the stray crumb tumbling his way down to the belly of the dungeons. He was used to that sense that the walls were closing in, trying to eat him up, but with Hermione's note in his shaking hand, clueless of whatever the hell Malfoy had set loose in the castle, he felt more lost than ever, and he was always bloody lost.

There was nothing different about the castle today than any other day, no outward rumbling or screaming or waterfalls of blood, and if he hadn't been running like he were in a marathon, the journey down to the dungeons would've been uneventful. The air grew steadily colder, the cobbled and ancient stones damper, the occasional rug mustier, as it had since he'd first seen it as a wiry eleven-year-old discovering the world that had been kept from him for so long.

The door to Snape's quarters was firmly shut, but Harry could hear faint voices from within. He recognised Snape's distinctive low tones as being somewhat panicked, which only wound up the tight spool of fear in his stomach further. He could count on his hands the number of times he'd seen Snape anything less than condescendingly annoyed or smug. He reached out and knocked.

Dumbledore opened the door gracefully, peering through his glasses at what Harry imagined painted a sorry image of a shaking child far too unprepared for the task ahead of him. "Ah, Harry. What brings you here so quickly?"

His eyes caught on Snape's looming figure in the background. His already ghost white skin had become almost translucent, dark eyes darting about like a tadpole let free in a pond. "I sent Hermione and Ron to the Room of Requirement." At this, Snape's eyes finally settled on a single subject - Harry himself - and narrowed. "I'm sure you both know why," Harry snapped. "They left me a note." He held it out, paper wrinkled from where it had found itself in his clenched fist. Dumbledore took it and smoothed it out neatly. "Says if they're not back by midnight, something's gone wrong. It's got to be half past by now."

"It's time," Dumbledore said, more to Snape than to Harry. "They'll have exited on the higher floors if the Room of Requirement manifested last for Ms. Granger and Mr. Weasley."

"They?" Harry echoed, but Snape and Dumbledore were already half-way down the corridor.

"No need to worry, I've instructed Ginevra to lead a few patrols. We wouldn't want anyone sneaking around on such a fine evening as this one."

"What are you saying?" he begged, but received no response.

He climbed staircase after staircase in an agonising silence, staring at the trailing ends of the professors' robes, an unusually somber light grey against Snape's usual inky black. There was some unspoken agreement between the two, yet another unknowable thing Harry had been kept in the dark about. There were hundreds of people at Hogwarts, and he still felt desperately alone.

The cloying shadows were suddenly lit a pale, sickly, hauntingly familiar green. Through the narrow windows, Harry caught sight of what he'd dreaded all this time - a snake bursting from the bare jaw of a skull hovering above the Astronomy Tower, shimmering in a biting parody of the Northern Lights, both a beacon and a warning.

"It seems our destination has already been Marked," Snape said.

"Indeed." Dumbledore abruptly rushed even faster. "Come, Harry."

There was a lone figure standing at the tower window when they arrived, pearl-coloured hair opalescent in the halo of the Mark's light. Dumbledore didn't seem to question why Draco Malfoy was there to greet him, or why he was bathing in the glow of the symbol of death; he simply brushed Harry and Snape aside and held a finger over his lips. Stay hidden and stay quiet.

Dumbledore stepped into the light. "Good evening, Draco."

Malfoy shuddered into awareness, taken from his momentary trance of stargazing, and spun around like a startled cat. "Expelliarmus!" Dumbledore's wand shot into the air and flew uselessly into the corner. "Dumbledore," he said. "You're alone, then?"

"I enjoy a night's peaceful wandering now and then. The castle has a remarkable tranquility about it, wouldn't you say?"

"Not for long," Malfoy spat. "I have backup. Let them in right under your nose and you hadn't a clue!"

Dumbledore considered this as he might a roll of parchment to be graded. "That's very good indeed. You found a way for them to enter undetected?"

"Yeah," said Malfoy, sounding grandiose in spite of his body's obvious trembling. "The Vanishing Cabinet in the Room of Requirement, I mended it. I've been working on it a while now."

"It has a twin, I presume?"

Malfoy's grey eyes took on a feverish glow. "In Borgin and Burkes. It's been lying unused for years."

"Quite ingenious, my dear boy. It takes impressive forethought to manage, a great deal of care. So you might imagine my surprise at how easily thwarted your previous attempts on my life have been. The necklace, the poisoned drink... well, if you'd forgive my presumptuous nature, it seems your heart hasn't truly been in it."

"Yes, it has! All year I've been working at it, and tonight-"

There was a yell and a crash from below. Malfoy stiffened and looked frantically around.

"It seems someone's putting up a good fight," Dumbledore said. "As you were so passionately telling me, you've been working tirelessly all year, and finally your plans have come to fruition. I'd take the opportunity to finish the job while you still have it. After all, I am defenceless. Unarmed. And the members of the Order working their way to us are very much not."

"I-" Malfoy stuttered, paralysed. Harry made a desperate attempt to rush forward, but Snape held him against the wall and motioned for him to wait.

"I see," Dumbledore continued. "You're too afraid to act without them."

"That's not true! I'm not afraid! I- It's you who should be afraid!"

"Why? I don't think you will kill me, Draco. It's not as easy as it might seem. Some say it breaks apart your very soul... Certainly no small undertaking..."

Malfoy looked sick, as ghostly white as Dumbledore himself, and was trembling like a leaf in a windstorm. "The Cabinet was my idea! I've planned this since the very beginning..." But it was as if he were trying to convince himself of his own words, and Harry watched cold sweat drip in beads down his temples.

"An impressive endeavour. Now, come, let's discuss your options."

The absurdity of the statement made Malfoy choke out a broken, hysterical sort of laugh. "My options? I've got you cornered, there's no escape. Your defences can't hold forever."

"Yes, indeed. Someone should be here any minute now to survey your work, and still you haven't yet killed me. I think you can see why I'm not quite convinced you have your heart set on it."

"Shut up! I don't have a choice." Malfoy's eyes glistened with welling tears as the reality of the past term truly sunk in. "If I don't kill you, he'll kill me, and he'll kill my family. The Dark Lord. He will, I know he will."

"The Light can protect you. Join us and we'll shelter you somewhere Voldemort won't find."

Malfoy snorted. "Protect me? You can't even protect yourself!"

The dawning truth of that statement shook Harry out of his stupor. Dumbledore was unarmed and at the mercy of someone who was rapidly losing his mind, and nobody was doing a damn thing to stop it. He struggled in Snape's hold, desperately trying to claw his way over and finally give Malfoy what had been coming to him since the very beginning, but Snape was deceptively strong for his wiry frame. Let me free, Harry tried to say, panic rising with his hummingbird pulse. Instead, Snape put him under a body bind.

No, please, he'll die. If Malfoy's not going to snap, someone else will. Can't you see? Can't you see they're going to kill him?

"I'm the one with the wand here," Malfoy continued, oblivious to Harry's turmoil only a precious few feet away. "You're at my mercy."

"It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now," said Dumbledore.

Malfoy's eyes widened, a deer in the headlights. Incredibly, his hand began to lower, just a fraction, just a tiny millimetre, noticeable all the same. Hope rose like a phoenix in Harry's throat and was crushed a second later by the sound of thundering footsteps. Whoever had been holding off the invaders had lost, and now they were bursting through the door like maggots through a corpse, four of them in their inky black robes.

An ugly, lumpy looking man spoke first, voice a reedy, sick wheeze. "Dumbledore cornered! Dumbledore wandless! Well done, Draco. Well done."

"Amycus," said Dumbledore. His eyes settled on the stumpy woman at the man's side. "And I see you've brought Alecto as well. I'm charmed."

"Yes, I'm quite sure you are," came Snape's low drawl as he stepped out of the shadows.

"Severus!" Amycus blinked away his surprise. "Supervising Draco, are you?"

"The boy won't do it."

Amycus blinked again, and then his face morphed into an ugly sneer. "Draco, Draco, too scared to follow through, are you? Come on, you made a promise. Yer family's depending on it." He tilted his head at Dumbledore's slumped form and missing arm. "Dumby isn't long for this world besides, and you can't even cast a single spell?"

"I knew he couldn't do it," Alecto chimed in. "Let me, let me. One of us has to."

"I'll do it," said the ugliest of them, all square face and hulking muscle. He stepped forward into the light.

"Fenrir," Dumbledore greeted.

Fenrir smiled, all teeth. "Move aside, boy," he said, regarding Malfoy's shaking form with disgust.

Dumbledore's eyes settled on Snape, hovering like a wraith at Fenrir's back. "Severus," he whispered. "Please."

Snape raised his wand. An agonising pain shot through Harry's scar as a sudden violent, excited aura wrapped around him like a vice. The Diadem. It was a feeling he recognised from Voldemort's worst moments. Bloodlust.

The puzzle pieces began to shift and rearrange in Harry's mind. Snape's not going to help Dumbledore, he realised. And Dumbledore knew what a traitor he was all along, of course he did. That's why he was talking about dying. He's been weak the whole term and he knows it. His mind spun. Tom, no, please. You know we need him. We'll fail without him. He knows more about the Horcruxes than any of us. Please, you know he does.

The aura changed to disgust, then fury, then grudging acceptance. Harry took in a deep, gasping breath as he found himself suddenly able to move.

Snape opened his mouth. "Avada-"

Harry screamed. "No!"

Wildly, he cast the Diadem into the beam of vivid green, where it bounced off the sparkling metal, harmless, and broke apart under the dim light of the Mark. The Diadem crashed to the floor, aura enraged but still present. All seven of the room's occupants stared in an asphyxiating silence, the moment hanging brief and motionless before them. Then, it, too, broke apart.

"Out!" Fenrir yelled. "Out of here, now!"

The remaining invaders scrambled like rats out of the ramparts and flew into the night. Malfoy crumpled in one great heap to the floor, breath coming in cut off rasps, face falling into shadow as the Mark dissolved into the sky, leaving only the clouded moonlight to sprinkle in short beams through the room.

Snape stood statue still, then rushed over to Dumbledore, who was staggering forward. "I'm quite unharmed, I assure you," said Dumbledore, bafflingly, to his would-be murderer, who heaved a sigh of relief.

Harry cried out through gut-wrenching anger, something feral like the scream of a wounded animal. "How could you?"

"You know nothing of what's just been done, Potter," Snape snapped.

"It's alright, Harry," said Dumbledore. "Those were my orders."

Malfoy let out what sounded like a sob. "You wanted me to kill you?"

"No, dear boy, I wanted Severus to kill me after you could not. The Curse had me growing weak, and I needed Voldemort's trust in his most valuable Death Eater cemented."

"The Curse is gone," Snape said. "How did you do it?"

"Let us say Harry and I ran into an old friend. An old friend who was ready to rip me limb from limb. Quite literally, I'm afraid."

"Your arm," Snape said, realising. "The Curse was cut off at the root."

"Precisely. Regardless, I'm still weakened enough to be burdensome, so I mistakenly believed the plan could still continue along its course. It seems Harry and Tom had a different plan."

"You wanted me to stand by and let you die?" Harry screeched. "You thought I'd just sit there and do nothing while they killed you in cold blood?"

"I instructed Severus to put you under a bodybind. But I underestimated the combined power of the fragments of magic that were not your own."

"Why would you?" Harry shot back. "We need you. I need you. You have to know that!"

"Don't make my same mistake, Harry," Dumbledore said. "Don't underestimate what you have the power to do. The War would've gone on the same without me, as it will now with me somewhat out of commission."

"But what we really need - your mind - is still fine. That's the whole point!" Harry cringed. "Well, if your idea of winning the War was dying..."

Dumbledore laughed, then, genuine and bright. "It seems my time hasn't yet come. Very well, Harry. My body may be old and weak, but I will continue to lend my mind to the cause as I always have. Come, let's return to the Hospital Wing. I have a great deal to consider while I recover."

Author's Note: I don't like putting a twist on scenes that J.K. already wrote, but this kind of is a key part of the book, and I certainly can't just ignore it. I'm really nervous about this one, but I tried.

Sorry for the year's wait... again. I've had university and a global pandemic to deal with, so it's been hard. I'm more proud of the next chapter than this one, since it's actually all my own. Hopefully it won't be another year before that one sees the light of day. On the other hand, here's my birthday present to myself! Happy 22nd, me, you can actually say you bloody well wrote something for once!

I've made an art reference for how I imagine each Horcrux! I'll probably add it to the main notes of the fic, but here for now: imgur album is under /a/P0GZ7kb ! Obviously the eye colours will be different. The Horcrux within Harry has green and red. Diadem: grey and red. Locket and cup (when we see them soon I swear): pure red. Voldemort: usually red (yes, I said usually).

You know, just to be helpful.

Or just imagine any of the canon casting. Or Tom Hughes, because if anyone on Earth was given a more fitting name... holy shit. He looks like Tom Riddle and his name is Tom. He was born for the cast. Or, like, imagine whoever. -shrug- It's your reading experience! xx