It had always been in the realm of possibilities for someone to pass by. They did not, after all, have any reason to expect that no one would be accessing vaults. What was strange, however, was the fact that no rail car was ever used.
"Routine maintenance," someone outside the door said. "Seems like the service hatch was opened not fifteen minutes are making sure that the security of the vaults was not impacted, and for that reason, we ask you to open from the inside."
"Can they not get in?" Daphne whispered.
"No idea. Get under here."
He threw the cloak over her a moment before the door was opened. Most likely, they only asked out of politeness or perhaps to give the impression that they could not open the customer's vaults. As they looked around, seeing only Griphook, lying down unconscious, he could only think that their guide must have known that there would be maintenance. Had he planned to scare them off himself? Had he planned to double-cross them? Why bother?
"There's no one else in here," one of the goblins said.
"Why would there be anyone else?"
"I just don't know why else this would happen. What was the point of going into the service hatch? What was the point of going in here?"
"Let's ask him when he wakes up. It could have been something simple, like he was checking something and then something fell from up there and hit him on the head."
"Harry, might I ask you to trust me a moment?"
"I don't suppose I have any choice."
As quickly as he remembered that his companion had moderate skill in Legilimency, one of the goblins looking around seemed to stop and think a moment.
"Have you ever seen that thing before?" he asked, pointing at the cup that some Hufflepuff must have made.
"No. It's not goblin-made. Wroclaw isn't a stickler about anything that isn't ours. Whenever wizards are opening accounts here, he doesn't keep track of it. It's not like it's going to go missing."
"I know that, I just... I've never seen anything like it. There's something strange about it."
"Customers are known to store magical artefacts in here. What difference does it make?"
"I think it... I don't know. It might have been the thing that Griphook wanted to check in the first place. He might have been asked to store it here."
"If you're going to pick it up, do it with the glove. Everything in here's cursed."
Sure enough, the goblin produced a glove that he recognized as dragonskin. Could it cancel all the curses? Were there some that did not apply to goblins in the first place? The only thing he knew for certain was that Daphne was putting ideas in their heads, meaning she had become a lot better at her craft. Silently, they followed the goblins out of the vault.
"We'll have to get Healfinger down here one way or another," one of them muttered. "Can't believe we're inspecting this stupid cup."
"Why did I just have a thought that the security shouldn't be active whilst it's out of the vault?" the other one asked. "I'm starting to not like this whole thing. Let's go straight to the others."
"I'm feeling sleepy. Why am I feeling sleepy?"
"It's the damn cup. Leave it here. It's probably what happened to Griphook."
"I don't care what happens to it. I just don't want the customers to ask any questions."
"We'll have a certain someone put it back later. He'll have learned his lesson about how to handle magical artefacts."
It was hard to say how many of the goblins' words had been inspired by his companion, but he would have recognized a silent, poorly cast stunner anywhere. The basic trick to get them to leave it behind worked like a charm, quite literally. Daphne grabbed the cup with her bare hands and they made it to the end of the long hallway, to the source of the sound of the rushing water as soon as the bank employees went in another direction. Using one of Neville's plant growth charms, he split the bare ground beneath them where the water was rushing over it. Even if it had been solid rock as far down as rock went, the water had to be coming from outside, and the moss that he saw on some of the stalagmites meant that plant matter was getting carried in. Byrophyte grew in a crack in the rock made by sheer pressure and the split widened enough for them to jump in, which they did, if with some hesitation. The sound of a rail cart passing over head created a temporary break in the flow of water into the hole, which was enough time for him to cast the same charm again.
As soon as they were below the point where apparation was blocked by a jinx, if not some ancient artefact of the goblins, the pair of them apparated out.
"What happened to your hand?" he asked as soon as he saw her drop the cup. She looked decidedly annoyed with his choice of escape route.
"Nothing that can't be fixed." The skin was gone; it was a classic third degree burn. "Needless to say, expect perhaps with you, but I am not one of your self-sacrificing friends. I want something for all this trouble."
"We'll talk about it when you're back from the healers."
He looked around. It was dark already, and probably most people were asleep, but it looked like Ron was on watch, walking over with his wand lit.
"Is that it, then?"
"Right down to the bad feeling I get just from looking at it," he muttered back. "We can just leave it here right now. I need to dry off and get to bed."
"Yeah, that's prob'ly about right, mate," Ron said. "I thought you were much better at Occlumency now."
"I am, and I haven't had a dream in ages, but I don't want to give Voldemort another advantage. I would need to get a lot better in order to handle Horcruces, and frankly there's no reason for that. As long as we have everyone else here, we don't need me to touch them."
"Hermione's gotten a lot better at Legilimency."
"I thought she wasn't practicing."
"She is, but only on me."
"Oh, because you two are a thing now. It's not such a big deal if she sees something."
"I don't really have any secrets with her, mate," Ron said. "I wasn't all that complicated in the first place and when we started all this, I was more worried she'd get bored of me when she felt like she knew everything, but I think witches like it that way. I reckon at least the sensible ones would rather be able to predict most of what you're going to do than have the excitement of not knowing."
"It sounds like you have to have one or the other," he said, following his friend back to the tent. "When you change shifts, tell the others about the cup. Daphne's clever enough to do the same without being asked."
"We can't leave it here indefinitely."
"We're not going to leave it here. We're going to leave it somewhere, though, somewhere Voldemort won't be able to reach it even if he knows where it is, and that's where we're going to leave the rest of them. Don't think I haven't figured out at least that part of the plan." Ron only shook his head in response and he went in to sleep, having already used a drying charm on himself.
"Do not think that you are safe."
He awoke in a cold sweat and knew from the sun rising outside that he must have slept for hours. Looking around, it seemed that everyone else was already awake, so most likely, no one noticed his somniloquy, which his friend had reported to him once or twice. As much as he knew that he should be focusing on the apparent message from his mortal enemy, he found himself surprised that he had taken Ron's insomnia for granted in all the years that had passed between them. Could he really be talking so loudly that he woke up someone who was sleeping one bed over, or did his friend get worried, and listen to him whenever he was having a nightmare?
"Harry, you look like you've seen a ghost," Hermione said as soon as she saw him. He was barely dressed, which was probably not helping things.
"He spoke to me in my sleep again."
"I'm so sorry," she said. "If I had started trying harder in Legilimency sooner-"
"It's not your fault. I don't know if he saw anything... I think he might have, though. If he saw some dream of mine..."
"The connection goes both ways. Did you ever see anything from him?"
"Not really. I only know when he's near." He shook his head. "We might just be unlucky, and he's somewhere within fifty miles and we never knew. Either way, we should get out of here."
"I hate to say it, but you're right," she said. "I'll take the cup to the next secure location. Get everyone in order; I think we should move the camp to the Hebrides. I know of a Death Eater living there, but that's probably because it's relatively quiet and they shouldn't have any reason to expect us."
He knew better than to ask her where she was taking the Horcrux, but wherever it was, the one Ron stole from Hogwarts would not be in the same place; it would not even be close. When he was getting everyone together to leave, however, and all the stuff was packed up, Ginny practically shoved a newspaper in his face saying that he should see it.
"Mundungus Fletcher arrested?" he asked. "Why would this warrant an article?" It was not on the front page, he supposed, but there was a small picture of a surprised looking criminal getting shoved through some narrow doorway, probably something like the magical equivalent of a police box. "What's that around his neck?" He looked back at the witch staring at him expectantly. "Who told you about all this-"
"Ron let slip a few things and the rest of us figured out the rest. You couldn't keep it from us forever if you tried."
"I didn't think you would betray the group or anything. We didn't even know if we were right about all this," he muttered, waiting for the picture to loop. It was a distinctive silver pendant that even in black and white, clearly had a serpentine 's', and he instantly knew where he had seen it before; it was the locket that they had all tried to pry open back when they were staying at Grimmauld Place. "It all fits," he muttered. "He left the cup with Bellatrix, and there must've been someone in Sirius's family who agreed to look after the locket- he always said his whole family was a bunch of Death Eaters, and the security on the house is good enough that we couldn't replicate it with anything short of a fidelius."
"I knew it the moment I saw it," Ginny said. "I only regret that I didn't think that he would've stolen it." Her voice turned into something like a growl toward the end.
"It might ultimately be a good thing," he said, handing off the newspaper to Michael, who insisted on reading it himself. "If no one ever brought it to our attention, it might have been as good as lost forever."
"Was that his plan?"
"No, probably not. We only found the locket while cleaning up the place, so we don't know where it was originally. It doesn't really matter if Sirius's father had it hidden somewhere. Get Susan."
"Yes?" she asked, already close enough to where a crowd had formed around the newspaper. Harry could be annoyed at the amount of people who had figured out what they were doing based on what they had let slip, and probably based on which books in the Longbottom library were free of dust, but he could not do anything about it. If anything, it reminded him of how he and his friends were always desperate to listen in to the Order meetings.
"This is the most important secret we have. Saying anything about this, accidentally or otherwise, is betraying us all, but you know that." He turned to the Ministry brat herself. "Where do the prisoner's possessions go?"
"Technically, the Hit Wizards don't have the right to confiscate possessions of prisoners that could be counted as clothing. I've never heard of someone getting separated from a piece of jewelry."
"What if it was cursed in some way?"
"I don't have an answer for you. I've never heard of someone being brought in with a cursed object, but that might actually be taken. In that case, the belongings of the prisoner would be held in the evidence locker for the appropriate department until its relevance could be determined." She sighed. "If it's not relevant, it's auctioned off."
"Well, we don't have to worry about that right away," he decided. "He's only just been arrested. It's either still on him, or in the evidence locker, and if we move quickly, we'll get it before it can be moved. Our main concern is keeping everyone else from finding out we did this."
"Harry, with all respect imaginable, what the hell? Our main concern is the fact that a high-profile criminal was only just arrested and he supposedly has ties to the Order and he's about to be interrogated-"
"Susan, Voldemort reads the news too."
"Directly, or does someone do it for him?" she asked. "No one else is going to look at this and say 'oh, look, an ancient artefact; I wonder if that's significant for some reason'- if the leader of an enemy organization literally scans every article himself then you can boil me alive."
"If someone said something to him about a member of the Order getting brought in, it's too much of a hope to say that he won't ask to see it himself. He didn't punish Malfoy for dropping one of his old Horcruces off into Ginny's cauldron because he thought it was just as good of an idea, and only a shame it didn't work out."
"What do you mean?" the girl herself asked. "Did you ask him that?"
"No, but it's obvious based on what the diary told me." He shook his head. "Malfoy had several reasons to give it to you, like the chance to ruin your father, but I don't really know that he knew it had a soul fragment... at the same time, he had more than enough time to experiment with it, and he could have figured out that it was more than just a cursed object."
"That raises another question. If Voldemort's got a thing for ancient artefacts, why use a regular old diary?"
"He was only sixteen and flat broke; he didn't have a lot of options at the time. It was either the first or second Horcrux he made, so he could have used something less valuable as a trial run just in case it didn't work-"
"Dark Magic is famously unreliable like that, yes," Ginny said, her annoyance fading as quickly as it arose. "I think something we said earlier might be the clue there. When you think about it, the diary was the only piece of evidence in the entire world suggesting that Tom Riddle was the one who opened the Chamber and killed Moaning Myrtle. I wouldn't be surprised if her murder was the soul-splitting act that formed it."
"Why didn't he just take over the school?" Michael asked, looking up from the newspaper. "If he could kill one person and get away with it, why not just keep killing?"
"It wasn't invincible," Harry said. "I killed it with the sword of Gryffindor and someone else could have done the same. It would be smarter to use it for a series of unsolved murders than try to deploy it on a battlefield, but he needed his own people in the justice system or he couldn't have done much more than get the school shut down. Giving it to Malfoy might have been a way of incriminating him in case he disappeared for a time, keeping him loyal to the cause, but most likely it was a last resort; the Death Eaters were poised to unleash the monster on a bunch of unsuspecting schoolkids if something went wrong, but the situation was still redeemable."
"The Dark Lord's death wasn't one of those situations, then," Blaise said, joining the discussion. "Everything you've said makes sense so far, but why was it so powerful in the first place? We've been able to safely handle the others-"
"I wouldn't say safely," Daphne said.
"We were only able to handle them because we knew about the diary," Ron said. "I shoved that thing into my schoolbag the moment I saw it without a second thought."
"How did you know what it was?" Harry asked.
"Hermione told me, ask her."
"Fine. The diary told me that it literally fed off Ginny. I don't know if it was feeding off her magic or her soul or what- the point is, somehow by continuing to inhabit her, it was getting stronger. She had it for months, not just a few hours."
The explanation seemed to satisfy everyone except its subject, who frowned. He supposed he could not expect her to be happy to have that recounted in front of everyone; it made her sound partially responsible for the whole Chamber incident. It was a fair question, though, so he had to answer it either way.
"Why didn't you tell us all this before?"
"We have never tested the curse," he said after a moment. It was obvious, but admitting it was not easy. "Ideally, we never find out its limits. We know, theoretically, that anyone who betrays the DA will die in the process. The enemy doesn't know that we have this in effect, though, so they might think that there's some point to torturing us if they capture us. While we weren't sure about Horcruces, we thought it was best to keep the information to the upper ranks. That is all."
Everyone seemed to accept the rank explanation as Hermione returned. He had not expected it, but going to a full rank system instead of just having himself and his old friends in charge of everyone else did make everyone happier. It looked like Ron was giving her a summary of what she missed.
"Even if anyone was trying to think of a way of betraying us without setting the curse off, though, we're all parties to an offense that Voldemort will never forgive. A traitor would be well advised to understand that the Death Eaters can't make any promise to anyone's safety that their master can't overrule. The Ministry is ultimately no different; they have the Department of Mysteries to handle anything they don't want the public to know."
"I trust that was to no one in particular?" Daphne asked.
"It was to no one at all. At this point, we can be basically certain that no one is going anywhere with our secrets." He looked around. "We've been standing around here long enough. Let's get moving."
At that, it was agreed, and they were off.
As always, the first order of business was setting up the protective charms. The Hebrides were a special kind of cold all year round, but they were so far out of the way that he was starting to think they could keep using it as a base of operations. The food that they could source without being spotted would be limited, but they would always find something. Neville walked up to him as discussions broke out among various groups, and he certainly hoped they were going to come up with something helpful, because they was already up against it.
"Harry, I was wondering... should we move the recruits as well?"
"Yes, we probably should. I... I admit I haven't really been thinking about them and I've been letting you handle everything, but you've done a good job so far."
"Thanks... I'll let you get back to what you were doing."
"No problem," he said, looking back to the separate groups talking about different angles of the plan.