Disclaimer: J.K Rowling owns everything. I, in turn, own nothing.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to my editor, Athena Hope, as well as my betas: 3CP, DarknessEnthroned|MJ Bradley, Luq707, Regress, Thanos, and Thobeobo for their contributions.

ANYONE WHO JOINS MY DISCORD SERVER CAN READ SIX CHAPTERS AHEAD OF WHAT IS POSTED HERE! Chapters also release two days early in audiobook format over on YouTube.

If you want even earlier access, then sign up to my P.A.T.R.E.O.N page. They are usually a dozen or more chapters ahead of Discord.

All those links are on my profile, and if any give you trouble, use the direct links on my website's homepage.

Chapter 17: A Rock-Strewn Road

The smell of sloshing seawater assaulted him as he extended out his senses. The waves lapped and the seagulls squawked, but he felt nothing as he looked out over the water.

Dark swells broke against the sheer cliff face and were thrown back across the restless sea, out over the few surviving outcrops whose stones had not yet sunk, where they frothed white and fizzled out with crashing sounds of protest.

Harry studied those stone clusters, their jagged points like spired towers reaching up through midnight skies.

Finding this place had proved a greater task than he had expected. Fighting near innumerable outlooks not unlike this one had mudded banks of memory he did not often traverse willingly.

But I'm sure this is it. So why could he sense nothing? Perhaps he was too far away?

The sea's sounds stilled as he turned and stepped through blackness, resuming when his feet slid across slick stones and nearly sent him sprawling. The lapping water could not quite reach him on this floating clump of rocks, but the frigid spray was already dampening his trouser legs.

Harry regained his footing and stared towards the nearest cliff — between him and it, a treacherous mess of unsteady stones spread throughout the ice cold water leading down to where he knew there was a fissure near its base.

Harry cast a quick charm as he held his breath and dove. The water swirled around him but did not seep through his robes as he forced his way against the current and swam towards the looming cliff. No cold harassed him when he reached its jagged base and propelled himself down through the fissure and into the setting of so many long-forgotten nightmares.

The slimy stone walls were but feet apart as he swam through the narrow line of water slicing straight between them. A shiver wracked him for the first time that night; the wave of deja vu was harsh and cold.

That chill deepened when the stream itself grew thin and shallow. There had been steps carved here when he and Dumbledore had gone after the locket, but now the water ended in flat stone and he was forced to pull himself up from the sea unaided.

Not a good sign, he thought, readying the Elder Wand as he stared around and struggled to find his bearings.

Nothing about the cave looked right. Absent was the enchanted wall that had demanded blood and a wide opening leading into total darkness filled its place.

Harry paused on its threshold in an attempt to calm his racing heart. Back when he had come with Dumbledore, all the things this cave now lacked had frayed his nerves. Now he would have given anything for them to have been here.

Just because it's different doesn't mean there's no horcrux, he told himself, gripping the Elder Wand as he plunged on.

The stone floor sloped down as the empty silence closed in tight around him. This was all wrong; as the damp walls peeled back and the sound of dripping water faded, he could see no sign of ghostly light shining from the lake's smooth surface up ahead.

Harry halted near the water's edge. The air was wet and dank with moisture, strong with the scent of vegetation. That last had not been there during his prior visit. Nothing had grown here; nothing but death and misery, all dressed up in an eeriness beyond the scope of sight or smell.

Harry set his jaw. There has to be something here. He flicked the Elder Wand and sent a nearby stone skipping across the lake's black surface. Nothing stirred but white ripples which appeared star-bright in the vast cave's depths.

Solid certainty obstructed Harry's throat. It's not here. A swirling storm of conflicting feelings broke against him. Panic came first, rumbling in like thunder and striking swift as lightning.

Where was the locket? Was it even a horcrux? Did Riddle never find it? Were all the horcruxes different? Was he just wasting his time searching for them?

Wrestling his panic into hesitant submission, he examined his emotions with no small amount of tepid care. There was rage, frustration, hopelessness, and panic, but so too was there relief.

Who would he have taken with him to retrieve the locket had it been there? How would he have explained it?

His relief wavered under the onslaught of urgent, unanswered questions.

Harry rifled through his mind for answers. Gringotts had been Riddle's next best hiding place after the cave; was it possible they were all hidden there, down in the Lestrange's vault?

Strong fingers seized his breath and dragged it somewhere dark and cold. How would he break into Gringotts and lug out all of Riddle's horcruxes if they were hidden there? And what if they weren't buried underneath the bank? What then?

Breathe.

Harry closed his eyes, focusing on the brackish scent of weathered stones slick with slime and the salty tang of seawater seeping through the walls.

One way or another, he would find the horcruxes. Too much depended on it.

"Either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives."

The common room was all but empty when he stepped in through the portrait hole. A blazing log crackled in the fire and wind blew hard against the tower windows, but all else was quiet as he plopped down beside a red-haired girl bent low above a weathered tome. "Long night, I see?"

Lily jumped and the tome snapped shut. "Don't do that!"

"Sorry. I wasn't thinking." It was hard focusing on anything but Riddle and his horcruxes.

Lily ran a hand through her hair and winced when it met resistance. She must have been sitting there for quite some time; she seldom allowed her hair to knot. "I've just been studying."

Harry leant over her shoulder and peered down at the book. It was not half so old as he had thought, just in ragged shape. "Wasn't it Marlene who asked me about Africa?"

A flush filled Lily's cheeks. "It made me curious."

Curious two and a half weeks later? "Did Marlene come to you? You've always been good at researching things."

She swept a sheet of hair back from her eyes and rubbed at a pair of bags hanging just below them. "No. I was asked to look by someone else."

"Someone else?" The wrongness swelled inside him. "Who?" Her blush was worse than ever now and she would not meet his eyes. Harry's heart sank with an ominous click of pieces inside his racing mind. "Riddle."

Lily straightened in her chair. "I don't know what you have against him. It's ridiculous, the way you just glare sometimes. You should really get over whatever it is." Harry's hands were balled fists underneath the table and he could feel the sharp sting of nails biting into his palms. "I really don't get it. Headmaster Riddle has done nothing but good for everyone. You're the only one I've ever heard say a bad word about him."

Riddle had been absent from the castle for most of the past month, and still he was corrupting her. Harry had to stop him.

But how?

He cleared his mind and forced himself to think.

Harry had to prove Riddle's evil to her. His mother was too pure a person to follow anyone who had done half the things that monster had. If the bastard was unmasked, she would see sense.

But how do I prove it?

No answers came to him amidst dreams that were a blistered field of pits and craters. He stumbled through them until he had seen all his dead friends' faces and felt their loss a dozen times.

The morning dragged on too slow; every waking moment weighed down his leaden eyelids and flattened his mood into sombre melancholy.

He was half considering feigning illness by the time he stumbled into transfiguration, but there was no professor present.

"Harry?" Lily asked when he took a seat beside her. "Are you all right? You don't look—"

"Good morning, everyone."

His apathetic state of drifting shattered into a thousand flakes of dust as he sat bolt upright.

Dumbledore was smiling out at them as he took a place behind the teacher's desk. "It has been too long," he said through gleaming teeth and twinkling eyes. "I hope all of you have spent your time as productively as I have." A wave of murmured niceties stretched his smile wider. "Good, good. Let's see, what shall we discuss today?"

James's hand went up at once. "Sir, I was wondering if you could talk about animation?"

Nothing said that class was new to him, but Harry's renewed focus did not so much as waver all throughout the lecture. When the bell sounded, he was slow to rise. Seeing Dumbledore had enveloped him in a quiet sureness he had not felt for months.

"Ah, Harry, I wondered if you might stay behind again." He blinked and looked around; the room had emptied and left the two of them alone. When did that happen? "How have you found these past few months? I'm sure the adjustment has been difficult at times."

Harry ran a hand through his tangled mess of hair. "It's been all right."

"Have the classes here been boring you? You were leagues ahead, last time I checked in."

"Some of them," Harry admitted. "I find some theory interesting, but I haven't learned much practically that I didn't know already."

"Unfortunate, but unsurprising. What of our last discussion? Have you implemented my suggestion?"

Harry smiled. It felt a fraction short of strenuous; genuine smiles like this one came so seldom. "Yes, Your Highness."

Dumbledore's eyes brightened. "Show me."

Harry summoned the Elder Wand, still dark as pitch and trimmed in golden patterns, with a flick of his wrist and looked around the room. There. Thick blinds were pulled shut over the windows, so he wove a single strand of air in one of the gaps and slowly forced it outward until the square of light grew wider.

Dumbledore clapped his wizened hands. "That is excellent! I dare say few have gained such elegant control." A familiar twinkle danced in those blue eyes. "You should be proud."

Seven years of war had not dulled the rush he felt when complimented by his mentor. "Thank you."

"Do you have any other questions for me?" Dumbledore asked.

Harry shuffled foot to foot. "I'm… a bit ahead in terms of animation."

"I thought you might be. I apologize if my lecture bored you."

"No, not at all, I just wondered — well, I can animate things fine, but only a couple at a time and only to do basic stuff. I was wondering how I might…" he trailed off, grasping for the words.

"Improve the sophistication of your work or increase your capacity for multiple animations?" Harry nodded. "How do you animate an object?"

"Intent." There was no point mincing words; Dumbledore would understand his answer.

"Good. You are far ahead of most already — both in your understanding and in your casting. The truth is that sophistication comes from the mind as much as it does the magic. You must envision clearly the things you want done. The limitations on how many things can be animated hinge upon capacity."

Harry ran three fingers back and forth along the thin fuzz on his sharp chin. "Some people can only animate one small thing at a time because they can't conduct enough magic."

"Whereas others have not the mental bandwidth to maintain several sets of complex instructions."

Harry scratched at the back of his neck. "So if I'm strong enough, I have to hone my mind?"

Dumbledore was stroking his silver beard again. "I think so, yes."

More Occlumency. That was going to be difficult; Aberforth had taught him the basics, but not much past that.

"Thank you, Your Highness." He took a step towards the door, then paused.

"Yes, Harry?" Was it his imagination, or was there amusement in the old man's voice?

If not for that gentle hint of warmth, he might never have gone on. "It's… a bit more abstract?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "Aren't all manner of interesting things?"

Harry turned back to face his mentor. "What do you do if you have a goal, but no idea how to reach it?" he asked. "I feel like I'm just fumbling around and not finding anything. I know what I want, I just… I don't know how to get there."

"That does somewhat depend on the goal, but I have always found doing something preferable to doing nothing." Removing his half-moon spectacles, the emperor went on. "I think what you shouldn't do is sit back and wallow in uncertainty while you consider what you should be doing. That only leads to regret and a lack of learning."

"But is it sometimes not better to wait for inspiration? Or work on other things while you consider?" Harry asked. "Especially if your goal has risks attached?"

"Certainly every scenario is different, but how many times have you sat back and pondered while waiting for inspiration that never came?" Countless bleak November days flashed past his eyes in a single blink. "How many times have you distracted yourself with other things, only to never find your way back onto the path you ought to have been trudging down?"

Could he have saved Hermione if he had acted faster? Could he have somehow beaten Voldemort had he faced him in the forest? Could he have protected Dumbledore if he had attacked when Malfoy had come up atop the tower? "Too many." It was a wonder his voice did not crack.

Dumbledore's forlorn smile brimmed with wise compassion. "Is it not better to stumble down a rock-strewn road and stub your toe or stumble than to stand at its mouth and never take a step?"

"Unless you stumble too far or fall too hard," Harry pointed out.

Having finished polishing his spectacles with the sleeve of his red robes, Dumbledore returned them back onto his crooked nose. "And that is precisely why you should not stumble blindly."

"Wasn't that the question?" Harry asked. "Stumble blindly or not stumble at all?"

"The question was what to do when you were unsure of how to reach your goals," Dumbledore corrected him. "The answer is to pick a path — pick a plan, even if you fear it is an imperfect one. Mistakes are lessons and life is far too short to sit back and learn nothing."

A deep ache gonged through Harry's heart as he looked up into those deep blue eyes. How different things could have been had you not trusted Snape… "Thank you again, Your Highness."

His preparations took three days, but that Friday evening Harry trudged between high banks of snow and down the path to Hogsmeade until he was sheltered from any prying eyes by the rows of evergreens on either side of him. One final look around revealed no onlookers, so he spun on his heel and felt the air close in around him.

He was standing among rows of crumbling headstones when his breath returned. It eased in and out of him; the chill here was sharp, but not so jagged as the biting cold assailing Scotland.

Harry drew up his hood and stared towards a high hill slanting up beyond what remained of the graveyard's aged fence. A frown brought deep creases up around his lips. Open space gaped atop the hill where an old church ought to have been standing.

Hairs prickled along his arms. Of all the small changes, this one felt strange and ominous.

Get over it, he urged himself. It's a small thing that doesn't really matter. It even made a shred of sense, given the history between magicals and the muggle faith. His brow furrowed. Was religious practice still permitted? Harry shook his head as if to clear it of unimportant questions as he pressed on.

Everywhere was the evidence of prolonged neglect as he picked his way through tangled knots of sharp-pronged hedges spanning the gap between gnarled oak trees. He could not help but wonder how long-abandoned this place was; not only was the underbrush an unruly maze of hazards, but the brown and brittle grass was overgrown and undisturbed.

A sharp breath hissed out between his teeth as Harry stumbled and threw out a hand. The bare branch he snagged dipped and cracked, but his grip on it was enough to keep him upright. "Smarten up," he muttered underneath his breath. If misshapen shrubs and jutting roots continued to pose problems, then he might as well turn back now.

His holster rattled faintly as the wand inside it stirred. Never.

Harry released the now sagging branch and leant forward. Through a rare gap in the snarled foliage, he could see the plot of land on which Riddle Manor had once stood. In its place were high black columns bearing aloft a large keep that seemed halfway between a manor and a castle.

Harry stared hard at what he was certain must be Riddle's doing. Fierce yearning bubbled up inside him and the Elder Wand blazed hot enough to singe the hairs along his forearm through its well-made holster.

Not now. He dragged his eyes away from the black pillars and stained glass windows as he renewed his trek uphill. Tonight was not the time to strike out after sudden fancies — not when he had a goal, and not when lashing out would yield him nothing.

Hugging the steep hillside, Harry veered around until a large opening in the tangled mess of hedges that had once been neat and orderly loomed up ahead.

There. Past the gap, wide cracks littered a low stone wall long since overcome by entangled vines of ivy. Harry paid the ruined masonry a fleeting glance, then strode ahead to where the Gaunt shack still stood, every bit as shabby and dilapidated as he recalled.

His heartbeat quickened as he cloaked his mind and prepared himself for traps. The Elder wand seemed to sing a piercing melody as it was summoned and simmered in his hand. Harry held it at the ready; the fact this shack still stood when so much else had changed had to mean it hid a horcrux.

Nothing stirred along the high hedges or amidst the flanking grass as he walked up what remained of a dirt path leading to the shack's front door. Once, a serpent's head had been nailed near the plain brass knob, but no sign of it remained.

Harry's heart pounded hard enough to interrupt his breathing. This was so like Riddle, luring his prey into a false sense of security.

It won't work on me. This place had felled his mentor in another world; he would not be caught unaware.

Stepping cautiously inside, he raised the Elder Wand. Homenum Revelio. Probing magic rippled out from him but found no trace of any human soul.

Frowning, Harry squinted into the old shack's dark corners. There was no sign of movement, not even when he conjured iron spikes that whistled off in all directions, or when he sent tongues of magic licking out across the creaking floor.

Where were the traps? What had Dumbledore unearthed that he could not, and when had breathing grown so difficult?

Then it dawned on him. "Open." Nothing happened but the spreading of uneasy tension through muscles that were already taut. "Reveal yourself!" A crow cawed from high up in some distant tree.

Doubt and rationale fought against his bid to utter words. Dumbledore could never have gotten the ring if it was Parseltongue-protected, a small voice whispered. Harry paid it no heed. "Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four." Rotted planks groaned and shuddered under the onslaught of a sudden gust outside as the certainty crept in.

There was no horcrux here.

The low roar of rushing blood filled his ears to bursting as his breaths grew short and ragged. Where the fuck are they? This had been his last lead short of breaking into Gringotts; he had already combed through the room of hidden things at Hogwarts. What the fuck do I do now?

"The answer is to pick a path — pick a plan, even if you fear it is an imperfect one. Mistakes are lessons and life is far too short to sit back and learn nothing."

Harry closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. In and out. This was not the end. In and out. Emotions crashed over him like the surging tide, but he held firm and let them shatter against his inner walls as if they had been forged from great, river-smoothed stones. In and out. There had always been two paths. The one he had tried was more direct, but the rocks were much too large and numerous. In and out. Reopening his eyes, he relaxed his grip around the Elder Wand. In and out.

Harry released a long, level breath and rolled back his shoulders. So I try the other path. The question was, where did he step first?

"If you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered , irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?"

— Marcus Aurelius

A special thank you to my high-tier patron, Cup, for her generous and unwavering support.

PS: The next chapter will be out in one week. Remember that chapters can be read early on Discord, YouTube, and P.A.T.R.E.O.N! All those links are on my profile, and if any give you trouble, use my website's homepage. That site can be found via a generic Google search of my pen name.