Thanks for all the reviews on the last chapter :) And thanks Myra109 for reviewing every single chapter - I just love waking up to 20 new reviews :D

Read, enjoy and review :)

The week passed rather uneventfully for Harry and Draco. The Order was busy doing damage control at the Ministry and recruiting new members. Once or twice the Order got engaged in skirmishes and battles with Death Eaters. Other times they saved muggle-borns from attacks. Still, the number of suspicious deaths and disappearances of muggles and muggle-borns reported in the Prophet grew.

Harry and Draco were, as Draco had predicted, not allowed to take part in any fighting. They were, however, allowed to join the Order meetings and were thus always up to date and not quite as bored as they had expected.

But it wasn't just the meetings that kept them busy. Researching the Dark Lord's family history had turned out to be more interesting than either of the two boys had anticipated. They had quickly figured out who the Dark Lord's parents had been. They had already known his real name – Tom Marvolo Riddle – and thus that a muggle named Riddle had been his father. Dumbledore had told them that the ring he had been wearing in Slughorn's memory had once belonged to a Marvolo Gaunt. It was easy to guess and easier still to confirm that Voldemort was the last living Gaunt.

Finding out more about the Gaunts – a pureblooded family, members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the last descendants of Salazar Slytherin – was a simple matter, and as already mentioned rather interesting. This was hardly due to anything interesting happening to the Gaunts – their lives had been rather depressing tales of mental illness and violence. But Harry and Draco learned about them through footnotes in books, journals and diaries of Black family members, and the Black family's history was one full of scandals and political intrigues.

Harry and Draco would often sit side by side on the couch in the library, both engrossed in one of the old books they had found, occasionally exchanging exciting, yet mostly irrelevant tidbits they had learned.

That was also how they spent their Saturday morning, side by side in the library.

"Found anything interesting?" asked Draco, as he did every few hours, while flicking through the memoirs of Phineas Nigellus. He was alternating between doing what he said he was doing – researching the Dark Lord's past – and investigating Astoria's family tree. He had by now narrowed down her family tree to a few likely sources of the curse, all dying around 1880. Before that, most family members had lived long lives, and if they hadn't, he could find reasonable explanations for their untimely deaths.

Harry looked up from a tattered old notebook, putting his finger on the page to indicate where he had just stopped reading. "Maybe?"

"Maybe?" asked Draco. "What's maybe supposed to mean?"

Harry sat up straight. "Well, it's the diary of Elladora Black – you know of her?"

Draco nodded his head. "I'm reading her brother's book right now." He held up the thick, dark tome. "Aunt Belvina used to talk about her all the time. Oh, uhm – Belvina is my mother's favorite portrait. And she occasionally used Belvina to spy on me, I think. Elladora would be Belvina's aunt and Sirius'," Draco closed his eyes, trying to picture the Black family tree, "great-great-great aunt."

Harry looked at Draco with wide eyes. "How do you remember stuff like that?"

Draco chuckled. "I don't know what they teach muggle-borns before Hogwarts, but that's what my tutors taught me."

"They teach how to read and write and calculate. I know you know how to read, so it can't really be that different… You had tutors?"

"Of course, I know how to read. I wasn't just sitting here, only pretending to read all week, while only looking at the pictures," Draco laughed. "And yeah, several. I was home-schooled, before Hogwarts. Most purebloods are."

Harry seemed to consider this, before he slowly nodded his head. "Okay. Let's get back to Elladora. I think I've heard Sirius talk about her before. Isn't she the one who started the family tradition of beheading house-elves when they got too old to carry tea trays or something like that?"

"That's the one," replied Draco, scratching his head and wondering if the Black-family-madness would one day befall him as well. "Any connection to You-Know-Who?"

"She went to Hogwarts with Marvolo Gaunt."

Draco closed his book and put it aside. "She talks about him?"

"Rants about him, would be more accurate. She absolutely hates him."

Draco leaned over, trying to read what could be read around Harry's finger. He caught the words "poverty" and "squalor".

"She thought his arrogance and pride out of place for someone as poor and ill-tempered as him. She thought poverty and a lack of manners just as terrible as uhm- she calls it dirty blood. And she says she's seen how he lives."

"She was there? Why?"

Harry laughed. "She's not clear on this. My guess would be that she was interested in him romantically and thought a descendant of Slytherin would be a good catch. She insisted on meeting his family. That's how she found out how poor and ill tempered he really was, and that's why she's so mad at him."

Draco frowned. "She must have known he was poor before, though. Details like that are hard to keep a secret. She was a rich pureblood herself, she should have been able to tell."

Harry shrugged. "They had a few family heirlooms. Perhaps that was enough to pretend he was richer than he was at school," he speculated. "Perhaps he managed to convince a few people that his family was hated by the other pureblood families and that's why there were rumors about how poor his family was... I don't know. She doesn't really say. But she seems a bit naive."And of course she was naive and gullible, Draco thought. She had been a young teenage girl, presented with a direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin in a world were names were just as important as money. Harry hesitated briefly, before he continued, "and pureblood families do like to exaggerate."

"What's that supposed to mean?" huffed Draco, feeling oddly offended by the comment.

Harry looked him directly in the eyes. He didn't look angry, but something about his gaze was confrontational. "The Weasleys aren't nearly as poor as you like to pretend they are."

Oh. "I haven't said anything like that in a while," said Draco defensively.

Harry crossed his arms. "You told Seamus that if brains were money he'd be poorer than the Weasleys after the Yule Ball."

Draco looked away from Harry so the other boy wouldn't see the hint of amusement on his face. He remembered saying that. It had been on the day after the Yule Ball, when Finnigan and Weasley had started insulting his friends. He felt a brief well of righteous anger at them for attacking his friends, but it subsided quickly. They had been wrong in insulting Daphne and Neville, but he had understood their anger. Just like him, they had only wanted to protect their friends. Once he had his emotions under control, he faced Harry. "I admit that wasn't particularly nice. But we were in the middle of a fight - that I did not start, by the way - and I was angry and knew such a comment would bother both of them." It was easy to admit that it had been a nasty comment, meant to hurt. But he still thought it was not entirely incorrect. By pureblood standards, the Weasleys were poor. Then another thought hit him, and he had to swallow over a lump in his throat before he could voice it. "It doesn't matter anymore. No matter how poor he is - he has infinitely more than I do." More money, yes, but also more family. People who loved him.

Harry's gaze softened. "Sirius won't abandon you. You'll always have a place to stay."

Draco sighed. He did not want to think about any of that right now. "Does she describe the place?" he asked. "Elladora," he added, when Harry seemed confused by his change of topic, "does she describe his house."

"Oh, yeah. That's why I said "maybe" earlier. I'm only halfway through that entry. Give me a minute." Harry's attention returned to the book before him.

Draco patiently waited for him to finish reading, grateful that Harry had dropped the topic.

"Okay, yeah," Harry said after a few minutes, "she does describe it. With many more details than anyone would want to read about such a disgusting place. She described the smell in great detail. Elladora really liked to wear out the dictionary."

Draco's eyes fell back on the diary. He caught the word "odiferous," and smiled weakly. "Some people enjoy the proper use of words."

"I guess it's good for us that she was one such person," Harry admitted. "If I had been her, the only thing we would know about the place would be that it is disgusting. Apparently, she wanted to leave right away, but he convinced her to stay a little longer by promising to show her some family heirlooms."

Harry's gaze fell back on the book in his lap. He turned over the page and his eyes skimmed the rest of the diary entry. He began to grin. "The Gaunts had their most important possessions hidden under the floorboards."

"What types of possessions?" Draco asked, excitement growing.

"A few odd trinkets, some belonging to Slytherin, some not… among those trinkets… a gold-and-black ring."

Draco, who had been sitting on the edge of the sofa, finally released the breath he hadn't even noticed holding and sank back. "That's it. It has to be." The ring the young Tom Riddle had worn in Slughorn's memory.

Harry nodded in agreement. "It's got everything Voldemort values in a Horcrux and in a hiding place. It's our best bet."

Draco nodded. "When you're finished, let me read it as well. Then we'll talk to Dumbledore and get this done as soon as we can."

"Sounds good," agreed Harry.

They both returned to quietly reading, but Draco found it hard to focus on Phineas' self-adulation. Instead his mind kept wandering to Belvina, Elladora, and the Gaunts. To the Dark Lord and what they would do once they had destroyed the last Horcrux which they could destroy without directly confronting him.

It took about 20 minutes for Harry to finish the diary. When he lowered the book, he found Draco looking at him expectantly. But he kept holding on to the book.

"Before you start reading this," Harry said, "you should know that Astoria's and Daphne's family also seems to have a- uhm- juicy history."

Draco smiled benignly. "Who doesn't? And you seem to forget, but my mum is a Black. I'm half a Black, so all this juicy stuff we've been reading so far about is my family history."

Harry nodded. "Right."

"Thanks for the warning, though. What type of juicy? An affair? Murder?"

"I guess it's not really that juicy, not compared to some other stuff we've read. But the way Elladora writes about it… reminds me of my aunt, somehow. They both love to gossip and badmouth others. A guy named Valerian Greengrass had an affair with someone of "lesser blood." I guess she means a halfblood?"

"Probably," replied Draco, his mind spinning. "Valerian? Are you sure?" He jumped up and walked towards one of the bookshelves.

"Yes," replied Harry, his eyes following Draco. "Why?"

Draco pulled a book from the shelf and showed the cover to Harry.

"The Pure-Blood Directory? Really? Is that what your parents read to you as a bedtime story?"

Draco reached for another shelf. "No, that's what they read to me." He grabbed an old edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard and threw it at Harry.

"Ouch!"

"Don't be such a baby," Draco commented, satisfied that he had hit Harry in the chest with it, opening the directory and leafing through it, "It's a classic, you should read it."

"The Directory or Beedle the Bard?"

"Both." He walked back to Harry and sat back down next to him. "Here, look," he said, pointing at the page with the Greengrass family tree, "there's no Valerian Greengrass."

Harry leaned over the book, studying the tree. "You're right. But I'm sure Elladora talked about a Valerian Greengrass." He opened the diary again somewhere close to the back. "Here it says that Valerian had an affair with a woman named Estelle, even though he was married to Melinda and even had a child with her."

Draco shook his head. "There's no Melinda here either. What was the name of the child?"

Harry's eyes darted over the page. "Azalea."

"There is an Azalea on the family tree. But it says her parents are Hawthorne and Rebecca Greengrass."

"Maybe they disowned him for his affair? Burnt them off the tapestry, like they did with Sirius?"

"And kept the child and passed it off as Hawthorne's?" Draco considered this. "Possible. Does it say anything else?"

"Not really. The diary ends here. Is this important?"

"It won't help us win against You-Know-Who. But it's interesting."

If Draco judged the expression on Harry's face correctly, then he did not find the information nearly as interesting as Draco did. But it was interesting. Interesting and a little worrying. If Astoria had relatives who were not on any of the family trees he had looked at, it meant that the person he was looking for might not have been either. And Azalea was, according to the directory, not Hawthorne's only child. They had had five children, far more than any of the other Greengrass family members. Perhaps that meant that Valerian had had more children than just Azalea.

Draco grabbed Elladora's diary, noting with some amusement that Harry had indeed started reading The Tales of Beedle the Bard. He took a deep breath, calming his thoughts. Wild speculation would get him nowhere, he had to concentrate on the facts he had in front of him, even if those facts were only the ramblings of a very eloquent teenager.

Draco was reading the diary for the second time, when a knock on the door echoed through the quiet library. Draco had first only skimmed the diary, reading only the relevant entries. There was very little of importance that Harry hadn't already mentioned. But know he was carefully reading all of it, trying to remember the information that seemed most relevant.

Both, Harry and Draco, looked up from their books and at the door.

"Yes," called Draco. Not knowing who was on the other side of the door, he put Elladora's diary aside. He was relieved, if a bit surprised, to see Albus Dumbledore appear in the library.

"Good morning," the headmaster greeted cheerily.

"Morning," replied the boys in unison.

He walked through the room until he stood in front of them.

"The Tales of Beedle the Bard?" asked Dumbledore, his eyes first falling on the book still in Harry's hands, then twinkling at Draco. "Interesting choice."

Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Draco said it's a classic and I didn't want to miss out on any cultural milestones."

Dumbledore chuckled. "A classic indeed."

"Today is Saturday," Harry suddenly exclaimed, sitting up straight.

The exclamation was so out of context, that it took Draco a while to get the significance of it. "The train?" he asked.

"The Hogwarts Express left Hogsmeade two hours ago," confirmed Dumbledore, and reached into the pocket of his violet robes, pulling out a small bag.

"Floo powder?" asked Draco, getting up from the sofa. "We're going to Hogwarts!" He had almost forgotten about their plan to destroy the locket today. He had completely lost track of which day of the week it was only a couple of days into their early summer holidays. It wasn't a surprising development, the days at 12 Grimmauld Place had been rather monotonous.

"After you," said Dumbledore, handing the Floo powder to Draco.

"Your office?" he asked, stepping towards the fireplace, eager to leave the house for a little while.

Dumbledore nodded, and Draco threw some of the powder into the flames, clearly enunciated where he wanted to go, and one step later he had left the old library behind and stood in the large and beautiful circular office of Albus Dumbledore.

Draco walked towards the enormous, claw-footed desk, making room for Harry and Dumbledore, who soon appeared behind him. Dumbledore walked straight towards the glass case in which he kept the sword of Gryffindor.

"So," Draco asked casually, while Dumbledore opened the case, "who of you two worthy Gryffindors gets the honor today?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Maybe you should do it, for a change. I've destroyed the diary, the cup and the diadem."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "I can't wield the sword. I'm not a worthy Gryffindor."

"Perhaps not in the literal sense," agreed Harry, "but you are one of the bravest people I know."

Draco turned away, towards the old headmasters and headmistresses in the portraits decorating the walls, to hide the frown on his face. As per usual, the former heads of Hogwarts were snoozing gently in their frames. I am not a brave man, he thought. He might have gotten entangled in many of Harry's adventures recently, but he had never actively sought confrontation. He had, if anything, actively tried to avoid it. What Harry perceived as bravery was nothing but self-preservation in dangerous situations. Harry, on the other hand, had always actively chosen to be brave and to stand up for what was good and right.

That, Draco thought, was the biggest difference between them. Harry was brave and kind… and Draco wasn't. After the war, Harry had praised him for choosing not to kill Dumbledore on the Astronomy tower. But in Draco's eyes – as well as in those of his aunt Bellatrix – it had not been a sign of bravery or kindness; it had been cowardice. He had tried to kill Albus Dumbledore because he had been scared of the Dark Lord, and he had failed to do so because he had again been scared. His short time as a Death Eater had started out of conviction, but his loyalty had soon been less about ideology than fear.

He could feel Harry's and Dumbledore's gazes on his back, so he put on an unaffected smile and turned around. "I did what I did to protect those I love. At the end of the day, I'll always be a Slytherin." He should feel proud at a declaration like that, and usually he did. But at the moment it felt more like admitting a weakness.

Harry frowned. "A very brave Slytherin," he said, obviously unwilling to cede the point, "just like Hermione is a very smart Gryffindor."

"Alright," said Draco with a sigh.

"It is our choices, that show what we truly are," said Dumbledore, giving Draco a meaningful look. "And we get to make new choices each and every day. What we chose to do yesterday only has power over us if we let it."

Draco looked at Dumbledore and thought that the man might really understand him. He would never admit it out loud, but he had skimmed The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore in the aftermath of Dumbledore's death. Even if only parts of the drivel Rita Skeeter had written were true, then Dumbledore must have had similar thoughts to Draco's.

"I still think it should be one of you two," Draco said, returning to the early question of the destruction of the locket. As his eyes fell on the locket, which Dumbledore had positioned on the desk, next to the sword, he wondered whether his mood was again affected by a Horcrux.

Harry shrugged. "I can do it."

Draco took a closer look at the locket. "We should probably open it first, though. But how do we do that?"

Harry also leaned in closer. "I have an idea." He said something else, but the last word came as a hiss and a snarl and the golden doors of the locket swung wide with a little click.

Harry took a step back.

Behind both glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome as Tom Riddle's eyes had been before he turned them scarlet and slit-pupilled. The eyes darted around, before they set on Draco, who was standing closest to the locket.

Then a voice hissed from out of the Horcrux. "I have seen your heart, and it is mine. I have seen your dreams, Draco Malfoy, and I have seen your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible..."

Draco stared at the locket, at the eyes, startled and unable to move.

"You are a selfish, unloved parasite… Destined to bring suffering upon those you love… You think you are making things better? You are making things worse…"

Draco staggered backwards, away from the locket. He closed his eyes, shaking his head.

"Do not listen to it," he could hear Dumbledore saying. His voice calm and soothing, as it often was in dangerous situations.

"You have killed Cassius Warrington… Astoria will die ag-"

The voice disappeared. Draco opened his eyes. The locket was encased in light.

He looked to Dumbledore, who was pointing his wand at the locket.

"Stab it," Draco finally managed to utter. Harry still stood a few feet beside him, wide eyed. "Stab it!"

Harry's eyes jumped from the locket to Draco, before he looked at the sword. He jumped forward, grabbed it, raised it high above his head and without hesitation brought it down upon the glowing locket.

There was a clang of metal and a long, drawn-out scream.

When nothing more happened, Draco slowly approached the shattered remains of the locket, aware that both Harry and Dumbledore were observing him. Harry had pierced the glass in both windows: Riddle's eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of the locket was smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had vanished.

TBC

Anyone else starting to sympathize with Sirius? When I first read OoTP I thought him a complete idiot. Can't even stay in his house for a year, even if it is for his own and everyone else's safety. Guess what – we're in the middle of Week 4 of this nationwide lock down and my family is starting to fight over who gets to "risk their lives" and leave the house to do the grocery shopping. (Okay, that was a bit melodramatic. But my grandmother has cancer and is rather weak after her chemos, so we have to do stuff for her and it would be detrimental for her if we got sick.) Everyone wants the chance to leave the house for a few minutes. And Austria has a new rule – you have to go grocery shopping on your own (so no taking your siblings/partners/roommates/… with you) and you have to wear a mask. Anyway, 3 1/2 weeks of this and my whole family is already going stir-crazy. I'm an introvert who has a dog, so I get to go outside for an hour every day, and I have my family to spend time with, and even I am starting to feel antsy. Now imagine being stuck in the childhood home you hate for a whole year - you'd probably jump at the chance to save your godson from a crazy psychopath as well.

Anyhow, what are your thoughts on chapter 85? I wanted more to happen in this chapter, but when I realized that it was already 4k words long and that you guys have already waited for more than a week for a new chapter, I decided to leave it the way it is and post it. Draco and Harry have learned more about Voldemort and where he might be hiding the ring. They also learned something about Astoria's family that has the potential to be important, but we'll get into more details in the next chapter. And they've destroyed the locket.

Next chapter we'll start tackling the ring, find out some more about Astoria's family, and see some old friends. Next few chapters shouldn't take too long - I have a very clear idea of what will happen in them.

Stay safe, stay healthy. And to everyone who celebrates it - happy Easter.