And here's the thirty seventh chapter of "A Year Too Soon"! Enjoy!

* Review Response:
TheGreatBubbaJ, if it's fanon, it did find its way onto the wikia as 'official' info.
nkh1, DarkRavie, BMS, mwinter1, Yaw6113, Majerus, jamnaz79, Uday Sra, , lonewolf 83, cartelo, themadmartian, Rio47, Jaysto, Raymondjay41, Bryan (guest), The Howling Behemoth, Magic Blue, thank you for your reviews, folks!
Jostanos, unlikely, but they might still make the difference and keep her from dying while still in her thirties.
magitech, I'm not sure how much of it is fanon, but inoculations are mentioned in a number of stories where St. Mungo's plays a role. So it's possible that the Wizarding world does know something.
Charlee56, I will not deny having read my share of Dick!Snape and Incompetent!Manipulative!Dumbledore and that might be why I prefer them to be more accepting and proactively-good respectively now.
Wyrtha, well, not intently as he concentrates on the horcrux-hunt and actually running Hogwarts as a good headmaster should, but he will notice almost immediately that Harry is up to something once it's summer holidays.

* AN: As always, great thanks to my friend Skelekitty for his help in polishing this chapter.

Disclaimer: I DO NOT own "Harry Potter" franchise. No profit is being made. Same goes for any books, video games, anime or manga I may or may not use for ideas.

"speaking"
"parseltongue"
'thinking'
written text
spells

A Year Too Soon
Chapter XXXVII: The Third Horcrux

At long last, winter gave way to spring and the grounds that Hogwarts stood upon quickly lost their snowy cover. Sure, there still were a few patches of white here and there, but young grass was already painting the hills with vibrant greens.

Many Hogwarts students took advantage of these pleasantly-warm days and were spending their afternoons outdoors. While it was still a bit too early in the spring to have enjoyable picnics, the weather was great if one wanted to explore the grounds or read a book in the courtyard., the weather was perfect. And neither Harry nor his friends were among the people who would prefer to seclude themselves in a stuffy room on a day like this.

And since they didn't have much homework to do for once, Harry, Flora, and Hestia were spending their afternoon wandering about the hills the castle stood upon. Just the three of them, though: Daphne, Tracey, and Blaise, unfortunately, still had one last afternoon class to sit through.

As the Slytherin trio descended towards the Black Lake, Harry noticed something yellowing in the grass. Looking closer, he saw some foalfoots presenting their flowers to the sun. Those weren't the most beautiful flowers in the world, maybe not even this early in the spring, but the young Potter just couldn't help himself right now.

"What are you doing, Harry?" Hestia asked as she and Flora watched him start picking something - foalfoots - from the ground. Instead of replying, he continued working on his 'task'. Thankfully, it didn't take him too long to finish, so he hadn't tested his friends' patience much.

"Here." Harry said finally as he stood up and turned to face the twins, letting them see a pair of small decorations he had just made by tying some foalfoot flowers together. He then put one of these into Hestia's hair, just above her left ear. A second later he repeated it with Flora, leaving the twins with little shards of spring sunshine adorning their heads.

"Oh." Hestia breathed out. "These are beautiful. Thank you." She said after a small pause. And while the first part might have been a bit of a lie, she definitely enjoyed, nay, loved the way the attention Harry gave her made her feel. And she was sure, her sister felt the same… Right now, though, she was feeling a bit selfish, so she leaned in and pressed her lips against his. Not to be outdone, Flora did the same… as soon as her sister finally ended her kiss. She still didn't get equal as a theater-loudly 'Ahem!' made her break away from Harry.

"I hope we're not interrupting anything?" Blaise asked, pretending not to notice the glare Flora was giving him. "Professor Flitwick decided to end our class early and..." He didn't get to finish as he found himself busy dodging a Stinging Hex Flora sent his way.

~/ *** \~

Albus Dumbledore really wished he was half a century younger right now. His mind might still be sharp and his Magic as strong as ever, but crawling on his knees as he finished inscribing over a thousand runes onto the floor was not good for his aging body. Still, the results of this hard work would be worth every moment of discomfort he had to endure if the horcrux-detection ward finally worked as it should.

Getting back to his feet, the Hogwarts' headmaster set the piece of chalk aside and examined the runic array on the floor with a critical eye. Once he was absolutely sure he had made no mistakes and every single rune was exactly like it should be, the warlock drew his wand and began pouring his Magic into the ward. The process took a couple of minutes, but eventually the chalk-drawn symbols flashed with pale-blue light briefly, indicating that the ward was now active.

Good. Now to test that the ward actually worked…

Checking that his ward was as it should be again, Dumbledore began deactivating the safeguards around the horcrux-diary one by one. He was through half of them, when the ward he was testing sent him a… feeling? - a signal indicating that it was detecting a horcrux within the warded area. This was promising, but there still were more tests that he needed to run before he could mark this ward design as a success.

Having finally disabled all of the safeguards around Tom Riddle's diary, Dumbledore summoned the cursed book, making sure to never actually touch it with his hands. And as soon as the diary passed the invisible threshold of the detection ward, it stopped alerting the aged warlock that there was a horcrux within it. Good. Levitating the diary back to its pedestal resumed the alert. Also good. Perhaps, this ward will actually be what he was looking for…

With a flick of his wand, Dumbledore conjured a pair of silk gloves and put them on - a safety precaution for handling something as dangerous as a horcrux. He then walked up to the pedestal and picked up the diary, noting how the detection ward neither stopped alerting him nor did anything to indicate it was now seeing two horcruxes. Good, it could differentiate between a living human and a mangled piece of soul bound to an object.

He really needed to thank Croaker for his ideas. Without them he'd probably be still trying to figure a solution to this problem. Back to testing the ward, though. He still needed to test how well the detection ward could locate horcruxes under various forms of Magical concealment. The usefulness of the ward would be rather questionable if it can be fooled by stuffing a horcrux into an enchanted box or some other similarly-simple trick…

An hour and over a dozen tests later, Dumbledore finally ran out of reasonable ideas on how one might try to conceal a horcrux. And the detection ward managed to see through all of them in a satisfactory manner. There, of course, were way more options that he hadn't considered, but those were too unusual and insane to expect that someone would use them.

And now that he had a working ward that could detect horcruxes acceptably, a new and even harder task stood before Albus Dumbledore: he needed to integrate this ward into Hogwarts' extensive warding scheme, without causing any disruptions. Indeed, the horcrux-detection ward would be rather useless if setting it up would require him to tear the rest of the castle's Magical defenses down.

He had the complete schematics of Hogwarts from the latest upgrade not two years ago somewhere in his office and, thus, needn't compile it again - thank Merlin for small mercies - but he still needed to go every single ward currently protecting the castle and make sure the horcrux-detection ward he was working on right now had no unexpected or unwanted interaction with them. It was going to be a long, tedious and rather thankless job, but one that he absolutely needed to do to ensure that Hogwarts' students had the best wards in all Britain - no, in the entire world - ensuring their continued safety. And he had to do it on his own as only the acting Headmaster was supposed to have the complete knowledge of the castle's warding scheme. Sure, Dumbledore expected that the Unspeakables had that information anyway, but he certainly wasn't about to share it with them in case they didn't.

Anyhow, his work here was finished. So, after making sure that all of the safeguards around the diary-horcrux were once again active and working as they should, the old warlock penned a note to Croaker, informing the man that their latest ward design worked satisfactory, thanking the man for his invaluable help, and asking him not to dispose of the horcrux just yet, in case the runic array they had come up with prove to be impossible to safely integrate into Hogwarts' wards.

His note finished, Albus copied the runic array for the horcrux-detection ward down from the chalkboard - thankfully, that could be done with a simple spell, no need to draw every single rune by hand - and walked out of his 'laboratory'. It was the time for him to return to Hogwarts.

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For the first Care for Magical Creatures lesson he was teaching, Hagrid decided to introduce the class to a couple of young unicorns - they were still silver in color, but small horns were starting to grow from their heads. That said, Harry got an impression that the gamekeeper originally wanted to talk about a more 'interesting' creature, like, say, a cerberus or a hippogryph or another similarly dangerous beast, but Professor Kettleburn had talked some sense into him.

"Gather 'ere, gather 'ere." Hagrid boomed as he brought the teens to a large paddock with the unicorns. "Today we will be talking about unicorns." He addressed the class. "What can yer tell me about these magnificent creatures?" Almost immediately, more than a dozen hands rose into the air. Pausing for a moment, the half-giant picked someone to answer his question. "Yes,... Ms. Edgecombe, right?" The Ravenclaw girl nodded.

"Well..." She began. "Unicorns are Magical equines native to Europe. Adult unicorns are snow-white and have a single horn growing from their foreheads. Unicorns are more trusting towards women, especially virgins." Marietta said, blushing quite noticeably. Taking a moment to recompose herself, she continued: "But younger ones will approach men as well. Unicorns are creatures with strong connection to Magic and their hair and horns are used in potion making. Their tail hair is also used for wand cores."

"Good. 'ere, take a point teh Ravenclaw." Hagrid said. "Anyone wants teh add anythin'?" He asked then.

"While adult unicorns are indeed pure white, their foals are actually golden and don't have a horn." A red-haired girl wearing Hufflepuff colors said. "They turn silver when they are about two years old and start growing their horn at about four years of age. Unicorns are said to become adults at seven." She paused for a moment, before continuing: "I don't think anyone knows how long unicorns can live."

"Right." The gamekeeper said, nodding his head. "Take a point for 'Affelpuff, Ms... ?"

"Macavoy, Heidi Macavoy." The girl gave her name.

"As Ms. Macavoy said, unicorns don't turn white till they ah seven. These ones 'ere were born three summers ago an' just start growing their 'orns." Hagrid said. "You can pet them afta we finish talkin' about unicorns. They should let everyone pet them. But we're not finished yet." He continued: "Anyone wants teh add anythin'?" His question was met with silence. "A'ight. Unicorns' blood is also very Magical and can keep death away, but will curse yeh terribly as a price. And while unicorns are creatures of purity and Light, they are not defenseless. Even foals can outrun transformed werewolves. And unicorns 'ave very strong legs and their 'orns are 'ard and sharp. Never startle a unicorn, or it might 'urt you much." The half-giant warned.

They discussed unicorns some more with a bit of input from Professor Kettleburn. Then Hagrid let his students approach the pair of unicorns in small groups. And just like the man had promised, the silvery foals let both girls and boys pet them. When it was Harry's turn, the unicorn eyed him warily for a few long seconds, probably sensing whatever taint of Dark Magic from the horcrux that still persisted, but eventually decided that he wasn't evil or anything and let him pet it. Much to Flora's and Hestia's delight as the twins thought that he looked very cute while petting a unicorn.

All in all, their first Care for Magical Creatures lesson with Hagrid went pretty well, and the young Potter was sure that if the man can reign in his desire to show the more dangerous creatures, he would make a decent teacher for the class.

~/ *** \~

It has taken him a while, but Dumbledore has finally finished going over the many wards already protecting Hogwarts' and her students from all kinds of dangers. And much to his relief, it looked like he will only need to tweak a few of the existing wards to safely add the horcrux-detection one to them. He could actually do all that on his own, though it would require everyone else vacating the castle for a few hours - nothing too hard to organize for a Headmaster.

And so he asked the Professors to hold their classes outdoors for a single day.

This request did create a disruption in the lesson plans, but almost every Professor could teach something even outside of the classroom. Professor Snape, for example, chose to show the ways of harvesting most common Potions' ingredients straight from nature while Professor Babbling showed how one could work runes with nothing more than a stick and a patch of clear ground. And, of course, Transfiguration, Charms and DADA could easily be taught outdoors… As expected, the only Professor who didn't acknowledge the request was Professor Binns, who likely didn't notice it anyway. Dumbledore asked Madam Pince to substitute for him, sure that the librarian would be up to the task of teaching children a bit of Magical World's history.

Likewise, the house elves of Hogwarts were instructed to deliver the lunches straight to the students, thus ensuring that no one will have any reason to return to the castle while he was upgrading the wards.

Inscribing all the runes needed to add the new ward to the already impressive warding scheme of Hogwarts took him a few hours, but eventually Dumbledore was done with this arduous task - and he still had almost three quarters of an hour before the first afternoon classes were finished.

After a couple of minutes of rest, the aged warlock reactivated the castle's wards. Immediately he was alerted to the presence of a horcrux somewhere inside Hogwarts. And while the ward he had just added couldn't tell whom this horcrux belonged to, Dumbledore was almost certain that it was yet another anchor keeping Voldemort's soul tethered to the world of living.

If only the horcrux-detection ward could also tell him where the cursed object was hidden… Yes, this was one more limitation of the way he had developed together with Croaker: it could only detect the presence of a horcrux, not its exact location. And for a place as big as the Hogwarts castle, the search could be long and tiresome. Fortunately, he hadn't dismissed the grim possibility of finding one of those abominations within his school and prepared several portable wardstones that he could use to narrow down its location.

It would still take him a while to locate the Dark object as the castle was huge and had many secret rooms and passages, but Dumbledore was certain that with the wardstones projecting smaller versions of the detection ward that he had created in advance, it was only a matter of time before the horcrux was located and destroyed.

But going on to scan every nook and cranny of the castle could wait at least until tomorrow. Upgrading Hogwarts' ward scheme was a difficult and tiring task, especially when done alone, and the elderly Headmaster felt that he had earned himself a little rest.

It took Dumbledore over a week to narrow down the horcrux's location. It, apparently, was hidden in a secret room on the seventh floor, opposite of the tapestry depicting Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls ballet. A secret room he knew nothing about.

Well... he vaguely remembered finding a room full of chamber pots when he needed to go to the toilet somewhere around here, but he had never been able to find that room again. And he sincerely doubted that the Dark Lord would turn a random chamber pot into a container for a piece of his soul. Though, Dumbledore absentmindedly noted, it would've been rather amusing if Tom actually did that and he accidentally relieved himself into the said chamber pot-turned horcrux.

Now, he needed to find a way to access this secret room, one that Tom probably thought to be safely hidden from everyone, and find the horcrux hidden within it.

That's all, folks!
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