"So to what do I owe the visit?" Dumbledore asked. Harry and Remus had scheduled an appointment in his office for Sunday morning. Various contraptions moved and puffed silvery smoke, books were lying around where they weren't stuffed onto shelves, the portraits of the previous headmasters stared in interest from the walls, and a much-younger-looking phoenix slept on his perch.

"This," Remus said, setting a small, rune-etched box on the headmaster's desk. "Your inclination will be to touch. You should not, it's badly cursed." The delay to Sunday had been enough time for Remus and Sirius to get up to speed and investigate the Room of Requirement and the object that Harry had found. And for Remus to get over the worst of his full moon hangover.

"Oh, my," the old man declared, carefully opening the box, his hand flinching back as he resisted his urge to reach in and grab it. Harry checked the combat log.

Ravenclaw's Diadem uses Suggestion on Albus Dumbledore: Failure

The same thing had happened to Remus. At least whatever magic it was using wasn't enough to succeed against the well-trained older wizards even though they didn't have maxed-out Willpower. "This is Ravenclaw's lost diadem?" the headmaster finally got out.

"Sadly recovered by Tom Riddle," Remus agreed. "Harry and his friends found it in the Room of Requirement and fortunately recognized the same feeling of suggestion that the diary used."

Dumbledore sighed. "I apologize, my boy. I had no idea such a thing could be hiding in there, else I would have warned you of the possibility. I cannot imagine that Tom had it as a schoolboy, so he must have used the opportunity of his visit to apply for the defense position to hide it. I should have been more wary of his route through the school. How did you even find it?"

"There's a Room of Requirement setting that the elves use to store junk," Harry summarized. "We were able to, uh, ask for that room, but organized. The diadem kind of stood out from the costume jewelry around it."

"And well it should," he agreed, beard fallen in a frown at the perversion of such an artifact. He began to swish his wand above the case, muttering several detection spells that Harry was starting to get the rudiments of for his spellbook. Dumbledore's look only got darker and darker as he received the results, until he finally clapped the lid back on the box. "Such a waste. To ruin such an item."

"Do you think this one will require basilisk venom to destroy as well?" Remus asked the leading question. They'd already tried several strong attack spells just to be sure, and none had scratched it.

"You have a theory?" the old man turned it back on him.

Remus sighed at the obvious manipulation, but explained, "There's a term that only gets mentioned at the edge of a defense mastery, around the various dark wizards that seemed immortal. Horcrux."

"Perhaps Harry should return to his dorm," Dumbledore suggested, actually surprised that Remus had jumped to that conclusion.

Harry, annoyed, asked, "Did you remove all the books that mentioned that from the school library with the occlumency ones?"

The headmaster closed his eyes briefly, marshaling his strength in the face of the apt accusation, before admitting, "Yes. Because I worried that Tom had found them while he was a student here."

"What is it?" Harry asked, clearly not ready to get sent away.

Remus explained, "Placing part of your soul in an artifact, so your spirit will not depart the world when you die. If your body is intact, you can simply be revived into it. And, if it's destroyed, even worse dark rituals might still be able to bring you back."

"In addition to the act of committing a murder as part of the ritual, it's a terrible thing to do to yourself," Dumbledore added. "You potentially extend your life at the cost of your afterlife. To never be able to pass on…"

"That's a piece of Voldemort's soul?" Harry pointed at the box containing the diadem. "Wait… was the diary one too? That's why we couldn't see where it keeps its brain!"

Remus had seemingly been thinking along those lines, as he pointed out, horrified but not surprised, "No recorded dark lord is known to have made more than one."

"Tom always was an overachiever," the headmaster sighed. "And if he made two… he might have made more. I'm aware that he worked as an artifact procurer after leaving Hogwarts… and might have come across other items of power that he deemed worthy."

"And that's why he didn't die when he attacked me when I was a baby," Harry followed. "He can't die until we destroy all of these horcruxes. Horcri?" Harry's Conversational Latin rating was high enough he wasn't sure.

"Horcruxes," Dumbledore replied, looking at Harry astutely. "Though I'm curious how you came upon enough Latin to note the possibility of an 'i' ending for the plural."

"Spending a lot of time in the library," he shrugged.

Clearly feeling like a firmer hand was needed, the headmaster asserted, "No. I have been content to stand back and try to puzzle out your actions of this year from the sidelines, as I have clearly somehow lost your trust… but with you finding two artifacts of such evil, I fear I must insist on being told what is going on."

"You or Snape would have read it from my mind if you could have!" Harry fired back, not liking being pushed.

"I apologize. I am very sorry. It's one bad habit of probably many, and I have grown complacent in using it to sort through the casual deceptions of teenagers. I should not have used legilimency on you without your consent."

Harry huffed. The old man did sound contrite. And he desperately wanted the help of the archmage with all of his problems. But he fired back, "It's even worse that you let Snape do it. I'm sure he uses it to bully us in class! And all because he's still mad at my dad and his friends."

Dumbledore was not intending to give up any secrets. But he had a deep sense that Harry might return something of profound value if he could regain his trust. Something had clearly happened to the boy over the summer that was setting him on the path to victory that the old man had always hoped for. So he simply asked, "Remus. My trust is with Severus. Fully. Why do you think I might trust that he is an enemy of Lord Voldemort?"

Remus considered for a moment. He worked through his own memories. And then, brightening, he ventured, "He didn't want Lily to be hurt!"

"What?" Harry asked.

Remus explained, "Severus was best friends with your mother until late in our school career. They fell out over his… friendships, toward the end of our time here. But I could easily believe he still wanted the best for her."

"If he was friends with my mom, why is he so mean to me?" Harry almost whined.

"Consider who is watching in your classes," Dumbledore suggested.

"Just the rest of my friends and the Slytheri…" Harry trailed off, realizing. He shared a look with Remus. He turned back to the headmaster. He thought about it some more. He asked, "Is Snape only mean to me so the Slytherins will think he hates me?"

He smiled as if Harry was a dog that had done a particularly clever trick and agreed, "There may come a time that it is important that our enemies think that your ally is theirs. Try not to let anyone know that you understand the act."

Remus spoiled the assertion by adding, "While I can believe that Severus' loyalty is ultimately to you, and perhaps Lily, I can also believe that tormenting someone that looks like James Potter is something he inherently enjoys. I've heard the stories, Albus. No future benefit to spying on the Death Eaters can justify the abuse he inflicts on his classes."

Puckering like he'd just eaten a candy that was more sour than expected, the old man allowed, "I'll look into it. It's possible he's taken the charade too far." Seeing that both Remus and Harry looked mollified, he pushed again with, "If that's acceptable… please elucidate me on how you came upon all of this information."

Remus Lupin replies: It's your call, Harry.

Harry glanced at the werewolf, sighed, and decided that the astute archmage would eventually get the whole story from him if he got any of it, and just decided to shotgun blast information. He started by asking Dumbledore, "What do you know about Ekrizdis?"

Surprised by the seeming non sequitur, the headmaster answered, "The dark wizard that is believed to be responsible for Azkaban?"

Nodding, Harry explained, "We think I somehow got a power he had. I got it on my birthday last summer. I can do a lot of things that seem like they're straight out of muggle video games. But maybe video games just got the ideas of them from people that have this power? Oh. And we think that him trying to give the power to his students created dementors."

For such a short revelation, it was a lot to process. Dumbledore thought about it for a few seconds and noted, "I'm not familiar with what a video game is."

Harry sighed. It would take more time to explain video games than to explain his powers. "Like the world is just a game. I can see people's names and stuff about them floating over their heads. I can see a map of where I am. I can talk to people that aren't in the room with me. I can store my stuff somewhere that doesn't seem to exist." He pulled his broom out of his inventory, then put it back in. The inventory trick always convinced people. "Oh, and some books are 'skill books' and I can just read them in a few seconds and learn months of schoolwork."

"The power he knows not," Dumbledore couldn't help but murmur. He latched onto, "And presumably this power allowed you to 'organize' the Room of Requirement?"

"Yeah. I can see its settings. And all the rooms that have been saved. The 'Room of Hidden Things' kind of stood out. It was a real dump before I asked it to sort." Harry realized something else he'd been leaving out, "Oh. And I get quests that give me hints about things that are about to happen. That's how I worked out the Chamber of Secrets problem so early."

"You're divining the future?"

"Pretty much? I kind of wonder if they're supposed to be what would happen if I didn't see the quest? Like, it acted like I skipped a bunch of steps when I killed the basilisk before anything bad really had a chance to happen. Maybe it thought I wasn't going to find out about it until it had a chance to start hurting people?"

"Such a creature loose in the school and controlled by an unwitting pawn of Tom certainly could have caused significant mischief," the old man understated. He'd been thinking about how lucky they'd gotten.

"Yeah. And I kind of get the feeling that I was supposed to only have one 'main quest' a year or something? I only had one last year. Maybe the Chamber of Secrets was supposed to take most of this year. But then another one started when Sirius escaped. And that might not have happened if I hadn't been able to talk to him through the game system."

"Of course, you mentioned speaking with people that weren't in the same room," Dumbledore caught up. "You talked to Sirius Black using these abilities and caused him to escape."

"Right. I've mentioned he's totally innocent right? Peter Pettigrew was hiding as Ron's rat, Scabbers, and overheard when I told Ron about what I'd figured out by the time I went to the Burrow last summer. So he escaped and we haven't been able to catch him to prove he's still alive." Harry realized he was rambling and trailed off.

At this point, the headmaster was just taking so many revelations in stride, filing them away to reconstruct his assumptions later. "You say we, but you've been at school since, save for the holidays…"

"I was looking for him," Remus stepped in. "With Sirius."

"And Peter was hiding as a pet rat you said, which suggests he was an unregistered animagus. That is a skill I doubt he could have attained without the help of others…" The elderly archmage simply raised an eyebrow.

"Yes. Sirius is Padfoot," Remus sighed. "He wanted to come to the school so he could be around to protect Harry. We can't prove his innocence, and it's the only way he can move around freely."

"Anyway," Harry interjected, finally getting to what he hoped to achieve by reading the headmaster in, "the quest that started when Sirius escaped from Azkaban eventually got us researching dementors and Ekrizdis. And that's how we found out he must have had pretty much the same power as me… and the next thing it wants me to do is investigate Azkaban for something he left behind. And we don't know how to do that… but maybe you could help?"