Chapter 12: Losing Ground
Slipping on the pair of dragon-hide gloves he had received from Lupin, Harry tentatively picked up Ravenclaw's wand. Nothing happened, much to Harry's relief.
And using the wand that once belonged to the smartest witch of the age, Harry recited Demo atrum veneficus navitas ut est intus simultas, closing his eyes in anticipation.
Harry felt himself being thrown back against the bookshelves, various tomes toppling on top of him. Pain spread through his body, like fire, until he felt numb. Slowly opening his eyes, the first thing Harry noticed was that Ravenclaw's wand was no longer in his hand. Where the wand had been, there was a hole, exposing the burnt flesh of the palm of Harry's hand. Harry winced as he peeled off his ruined glove. And tossing it aside, Harry noticed a pile of ashes on the floor; the remnants of Ravenclaw's wand.
He couldn't believe it. Completely forgetting about his injured hand, Harry jumped to his feet and yelled out in excitement. He ran to the door and throwing it open, yelled "One more to go!" to anyone that could hear him.
One more to go.
***
"Harry, you need to focus!" Lupin called out, his voice filled with frustration. The two of them were in the basement of Grimmauld Place, dueling. They had been practicing every minute they could over the last couple of days, doing everything they could to prepare Harry for the upcoming battle.
"I'm trying," Harry said through gritted teeth. He angrily wiped the sweat off from his forehead. "Nothing seems to work." And he threw his wand down on the floor in defeat.
The last few days, Harry began feeling less and less prepared, despite the more frequent practicing and the more intense training. He felt his magic slipping away from him, all of the progress he had made over the summer, slowly disappear.
"Of course nothing's going to work," Lupin said, picking up Harry's wand and handing it to him. "Not with that attitude."
Harry shot him an angry glare, but said nothing.
"You're just getting frustrated, that's all," Lupin continued, his voice much friendlier and less annoyed.
Harry shrugged. "Well yeah," he said, rolling his eyes.
"Why don't you and Hermione go see a movie or something?" Lupin suggested. Harry didn't say anything, instead, he picked at a loose thread from his shirt. "Oh c'mon. It couldn't hurt, taking some time off practicing."
"Hermione and I broke up," Harry muttered, looking away.
"What?" Lupin said, surprised. "Why? Did you two have a row?"
Harry shook his head, looking sheepishly at his feet. "No, I broke up with her."
"And why the hell did you do that?" Lupin asked, his voice growing more and more angry.
Harry just shrugged, trying as hard as he could to keep his face expressionless, to keep from breaking down in front of his former professor, the last of the Marauders.
"You did it to protect her, didn't you?" Lupin accused.
Harry just shrugged again.
"And how did she take it?" Lupin asked, his eyebrows raised. "The Hermione Granger I know wouldn't put up with something like that."
"Well, she wasn't happy about it," Harry said.
"But she accepted it?" Lupin asked, his voice filled with disbelief. Harry nodded. "What did you tell her?"
Harry sighed. And looking away he said quietly, "I told her I didn't love her anymore."
"That's not true, is it?" Lupin asked, his voice slowly becoming less angry.
Harry shook his head, biting his lip in an effort to keep his voice light and casual.
"It's not true in the least," Harry said quietly. "Lupin," he added, looking up, "I love her more than anything."
Lupin nodded. "I know," he said simply.
"She's handling it well," he added.
Harry sighed. "Yeah, she is," he agreed. His mind flashed back to a moment a couple of days ago, after he had destroyed the wand. Hermione had taken one look at his burnt hand and had dragged him into the bathroom to heal him.
"You're still going to help me?" Harry asked, very surprised. He had expected Hermione never to talk to him again, after what he had done and though her tone of voice was very tight and businesslike, she was, in fact, still talking to him.
"Well of course," Hermione said as she wrapped Harry's burnt hand with a bandage, careful not to pull it too tight, though perhaps not being as delicate and careful as she normally would have been. "Ron and I promised to help you. Something as silly as you breaking up with me will not change that."
Harry opened his mouth to object.
"But," Hermione said firmly, before Harry had a chance to speak, "Ron and I can only go so far with you. This fight is, in the end, yours to fight."
And with that, she fastened the bandage on Harry's hand, stood up, and left the room without another word.
The past couple of days had been similar. Harry and Hermione's relationship was very businesslike, and, while they didn't avoid one another, their conversations were curt and short.
And Harry couldn't help but connect the decline in his magic with the decline of his relationship with Hermione. Even the most simple nonverbal spell was difficult for Harry; a wandless spell was simply out of the question.
I'm just depressed and stressed, Harry told himself. Being without Hermione will take some getting used to. And then my magic with be back to how it used to be.
And with that, he put it out of his mind.
***
Harry found himself running down the narrow streets of Hogsmeade. But instead of seeing the spirited village with bustling shops and friendly people, Harry saw only death and destruction. Windows were shattered, doors broken down. Whole buildings were aflame. The night sky was pitch black, the only light coming from the burning buildings. Harry could see lifeless bodies sprawled across the ground, their eyes wide with fear, their mouths slightly opened in surprise. Not a single body was moving.
The village was eerily silent, unnervingly so. But Harry kept running, his wand held steadily in front of him, his eyes darting furiously back and forth looking for someone. Anyone.
He felt himself falling to the ground as he tripped over a crack in the broken cobblestone road. But not wanting to waste any time, Harry quickly jumped back to his feet and dusted off his robes. He looked up, and jumped backwards in fear as he found himself face to face with the Dark Lord himself, Lord Voldemort.
"Potter," Voldemort sneered as he pointed his wand at Harry's heart.
"Riddle," Harry sneered back, a smirk emerging on his face as he watched Voldemort grow agitated at the sound of his Muggle name.
"Crucio!" Voldemort yelled, and Harry did everything in his power not to scream. But it was pain beyond imaginable and Harry yelled out, rolling in agony on the ground.
"That hurt, didn't it Potter?" Voldemort asked as he released the curse, his voice mock friendly and condescending. "Maybe next time, we should include your little friends in on the game."
He turned and pointed his wand to Harry's left. Harry gasped when he saw Hermione and Ron, tied up, lying in a heap on the ground.
"No…," Harry murmured to himself, his eyes stricken with fear, his stomach feeling suddenly very nauseous. "They can't be…"
"Dead?" Voldemort finished for him, his eyebrows raised, his mouth curled up in a smirk. "Of course not, Potter. I thought it would be much more fun for you to watch the Blood Traitor and the Mudblood being tortured and killed." He twirled his wand with his long, bony fingers.
"Y-you'll have to fight me first," Harry said, staggering to his feet and holding his wand out as steadily as he could manage.
"As you wish, Potter," Voldemort said, mockingly.
The two of them began firing off curse after curse, though Harry found himself spending most of his time and energy blocking Voldemort's curses, rather than firing his own.
Finally one curse hit him in the side, and Harry flew back, landing precariously on the ground.
"This is the end, Potter," Voldemort sneered and he stood over Harry, his wand pointing at his adam's apple.
"You can't win, Harry," he could hear Hermione yelling from where she was tied up. "You aren't good enough."
"She's right, you know, mate," Ron added. "You'll never be able to beat him. You might as well just accept it."
Harry felt his heart sink. His own friends didn't even believe in him. And who was he kidding? They were right, of course. He wasn't ready; he wasn't strong enough; he wasn't powerful enough; he was still just a kid.
"Avada Kedavra!" he heard Voldemort yell. But Harry didn't move.
He could see the burst of green light coming towards him. But he did nothing to block it.
He simply allowed the curse to hit him square in the chest. He was dead. Voldemort had won.
Harry woke up, covered in sweat, his sheets twisted and tangled around him. Breathing very heavily, as if he had just run a marathon, Harry tried to sit up, his hand fumbling for his glasses on the bedside table.
Voldemort had won.
He had lost.
And he had just accepted it.
Harry couldn't get the image out of his mind. Of his friends telling him he couldn't win, of himself believing them, and then, in the end, really not being able to win. He squeezed his eyes shut and fell backwards onto his pillow in frustration. He didn't know why he was letting the nightmare bother him so much.
Because it was playing with your deepest fears.
It was true. Harry had had his share of nightmares before. He had watched as friend after friend was tortured and killed, all because of him. He couldn't stand it. Because, to him, it meant that he failed. He had failed his friends; he failed his parents who had died protecting him; he failed the entire Wizarding world.
And in this nightmare, unlike any other dream he had had before, he really did fail. In the worst possible way. If he was killed by Voldemort, he would be allowing unstoppable darkness to spread. There would be no limits to Voldemort's killings and everyone he loved, everyone he knew, everyone who had ever even heard of the Boy-Who-Lived, would be in harm's way.
It would be a failure unimaginable.
Rolling over onto his side, Harry rubbed his throbbing head. He hadn't had a nightmare in months…since he and Hermione had gotten together really. There had been a few at the beginning of the relationship, but Hermione had always snuck into his room with a bucket of cold water and a towel to calm him down. She always seemed to be able to sense when he was having a nightmare.
Unintentionally, he noted with disappointment that Hermione had not come. You were the one that broke her heart, he reminded himself. But he still couldn't push aside that gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach as he realized that he missed her terribly.
When the sun finally rose over the horizon, Harry dragged himself out of bed, his eyes bloodshot with lack of sleep. Groggily, he made his way to the door, not noticing the bucket of cold water and towel that had been placed at the foot of his bed sometime in the middle of the night. Nor did he notice the door across the hall open just a crack, with two eyes peeking out, watching him make his way down the stairs to the kitchen.
***
"Have you found anything yet?" Harry asked, after what seemed like hours of researching. The trio had spent the entire afternoon and much of the evening in the library at Grimmauld.
"If I had found something, I would have told you," Hermione said coolly, her eyes never leaving her book.
"Maybe it would help if we just listed what the other Horcruxes were, and where they were found," Ron suggested, closing his book. Rom seemed eager to do just about anything that meant he could put his book away and stop researching.
"Ron, we've done that already," Harry said, frustrated.
"I think that might help," Hermione said, closing her book as well. "It would at least help us sort our thoughts," she added, ignoring the shocked look on Harry's face.
"Alright," Harry said slowly. And then he too put his book away.
"So first there was the diary," Hermione said, pulling out a piece of parchment and a quill.
"That was in Malfoy's possession, his most trustworthy Death Eater," Harry added. "Voldemort would have felt pride from gathering such faithful followers."
Ron and Hermione nodded.
"Then the ring…that was at his mother's home and would have connected Voldemort back to the strong Wizarding blood of Slytherin," Hermione said, furiously writing down on the parchment.
"And the locket," Ron said. "At that place where he used to torture the Muggle orphans." He chuckled awkwardly. "Can you picture Little Tommy-kins? What a messed up kid."
Harry smiled, not saying anything. He had already seen, of course, "Little Tommy-kins" in Dumbledore's pensieve. He had seen the young boy's obsession with power, his thirst to prove himself, to be considered special. I felt the same way growing up, Harry mentally added. Of course, he had never gone to such extremes as Tom Riddle had, but still…he had experienced what it felt like to be unloved, to be considered worthless.
"Then there's the wand," Hermione said, startling Harry out of his thoughts. "But why…"
"Tom Riddle got his wand the day he found out that magic really did exist, that he really was special," Harry interjected. "Getting a wand and feeling that burst of magic for the first time would have been very important to Riddle."
"You're right," Hermione said softly. "I hadn't thought of that. Well done, Harry."
Harry beamed. "I was just remembering the day I got my wand…" We really are similar, he thought.
He shook his head. He didn't want to think about that. "So then there was Nagini," he said. "Self explanatory as to why. He could talk to snakes."
"And that leaves the cup?" Ron asked. "And that could be anywhere!"
"No…" Harry murmured. "Not anywhere."
"Where then?" Ron asked. "At the orphanage where he grew up?"
"No, he hated that place," Harry pointed out. Just like I hated the Dursley's, he added.
"To him, Hogwarts would be the place he considered home." Just like I did.
"Dumbledore would have searched the castle, Harry," Hermione pointed out.
"He couldn't search every place," Harry said, standing up. He smiled, for what seemed like the first time in days.
"Where then?" Hermione asked.
"The Chamber of Secrets."
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