LUCY:

I tucked my letter to Cedric into my pocket and returned to the tent. Harry was sitting at the table, staring at the tent opening even before I walked in, looking lost in thought. He startled when he saw me, before his face relaxed into a small smile. I erected a silencing spell as I crossed over to him.

"What was on your mind just now?" I asked.

He looked over his shoulder in Hermione's direction to make sure she was asleep and facing away from us before massaging his fingers up and down the back of my neck. "You. And then you just appeared as if I'd summoned you."

"I just wanted to ask if you'd mind switching spots with me. I felt restless doing nothing but keeping watch, I want to read."

"I don't mind keeping watch," Harry replied. "Fetch me if you learn anything interesting."

I sighed as I reached for the book of ancient runes Dumbledore had given me. "I sure hope I have reason to fetch you."

"You and me both." Harry glanced over his shoulder at Hermione again before getting to his feet and pressing a kiss to the top of my head. "Good luck."

With that, Harry ducked through the tent flap, and I lost myself in the book, the world fading to nothingness around me.

I rarely lifted my nose from the book over the course of the next couple of days, stopping only to eat and sleep. My stack of diligently-taken notes grew with each passing day as I combed through the sections about each of the Hogwarts founders. I tried to glean something, anything, useful from its pages, but I found nothing that felt at all related to Horcruxes. I did find plenty of other interesting facts about the founders, though, a couple of which I shared with Harry and Hermione over dinner the night I'd finished the section about Hogwarts.

"Did you know that Helga Hufflepuff invented a branch of dark magic designed to keep someone you love safe?" I asked as I dug a spoon into a can of corned beef hash.

Harry blinked. "Hufflepuff? Dark magic?"

"Right? I was surprised too. It makes sense, though. It was crazy. Apparently Rowena Ravenclaw had two daughters, who both fled home for unknown reasons. After that, she fell ill, and Helga Hufflepuff took it upon herself to nurse Rowena back to health. Rowena didn't want to die without seeing her daughters again, or at least her eldest daughter, so she sent someone to fetch her. Get this, though, the person she chose was a man who was in love with her daughter, but her daughter didn't reciprocate, so when he found her and she rejected him, he killed her and then himself."

Harry and Hermione's jaws both dropped.

"This isn't in Hogwarts: A History," Hermione muttered.

"It should be," I said. "Well, maybe not. I don't think eleven-year-olds should be reading about this. But there's more! The daughter is the ghost of Ravenclaw. The man who killed her is the ghost of Slytherin."

"WHAT?" they burst out in unison.

I nodded. "Crazy, isn't it?"

"Wait, Lucy, does that mean that she might know what the Ravenclaw Horcrux is?" Harry asked, eyes wide. "If we go back to school, we can ask — "

"We can't go back there!" Hermione said in a high-pitched voice.

"But Hermione, if there's even the slightest chance that the ghost knows — "

"Lucy's not done with her story yet, let's hear her out first!"

They turned expectantly back to me, and I sighed.

"There's a lost diadem. Emphasis on lost. No one knows what happened to it. Apparently Rowena claimed to have it until the day she died, but when her possessions were gathered post-mortem, the diadem was nowhere to be found. Most people assume it was taken by one of her daughters, no one knows which. Apparently a couple people suspect Helga Hufflepuff had a role in its disappearance, since she was the only one caring for Rowena Ravenclaw at the end of her life, but that seems silly to me. Hufflepuff House was founded on the idea of hard work and loyalty, and stealing your best friend's diadem that supposedly magically enhances your wisdom seems rather contradictory, don't you think?"

Hermione nodded after a moment. "Yes. Tell us more about the dark magic, though, that's how this story started."

"The book didn't go into much detail for obvious reasons," I said. "From what I gathered, though, Helga was distraught by the fates of Rowena's daughters, one unknown and one murdered, and she invented a type of dark protective magic to try to keep Rowena safe from a violent death, even if she could do nothing to stop the illness itself."

"So this magic theoretically protects against, say, unnatural deaths?" Hermione asked.

"Yeah, I think so. Like it shields you from being murdered, and possibly from fates such as accidents as well. As far as I can tell, when performed successfully, Helga Hufflepuff's magic protects against all deaths except for natural ones, like illness or old age. I have no idea how any of it is done, though, because again, the book didn't go into detail for obvious reasons. It sounds dark. Not nearly as dark as Horcruxes, but, well, think about the other magical ways to prolong life. The Philosopher's Stone created a plethora of problems, for Nicolas Flamel and for many other people. Drinking unicorn blood curses you to a half-life. Whatever Helga Hufflepuff did to protect Rowena Ravenclaw must have been something dark that the author of the book didn't want others to emulate."

"Or perhaps it was so dark that Helga didn't share details in the first place," Hermione mused. "Still, it's noble, in a way. It sounds like she was motivated by loyalty to her friend, rather than a desire to live forever herself. And she didn't aim to make Rowena immortal, so she must not have gone too far down a dark path."

I nodded. "Yeah. Of all of the dark magic that's come to my attention recently, this sounds like the most noble, for lack of a better word. Even if it was warped by other users, it sounds like her initial intentions were about as pure as they come, with something like this."

"I've always wondered why You-Know-Who would bother with an object of Hufflepuff's, or of any of the other founders, seeing as he was so obsessed with his own Slytherin heritage, but if even Helga Hufflepuff tried to pursue a version of immortality..."

"It does make more sense now," I agreed with a nod. I glanced at Harry, who looked a bit grumpy, though I supposed that could be attributed to the Horcrux around his neck. "Harry, what do you think of all of this?"

"I think we should go to school and interrogate the Ravenclaw ghost," he muttered.

"We will," I said. "Just not yet. If we show up there, now, we'd just create more problems. We don't even have a way to destroy the Horcrux we presently have... yet. School is one of the worst places for us to go right now, objectively. I don't want to go there until we have no other choice."

"But it's a lead, it gives us something to do," Harry protested, looking at me with desperate, pleading eyes.

"I know, but we're not ready for that yet," I replied with as much patience as I could muster.

"We've just been sitting around for months," he whined. "We thought we were onto something with the sword the other day, but that got us nowhere, and now we have another sliver of hope and you just want to sit here and investigate it later?"

"Lucy's right," Hermione interjected. "I understand the frustration, Harry, believe me, but going to school isn't like going to the Ministry. It would be infinitely harder, and we — well — we all know how the Ministry went."

Solemn silence descended then, each of us lost in our own thoughts for a long minute.

"I did make a list of every magical object that was mentioned," I said softly, rifling through sheets of parchment until I found it. "It's a long list, because the founders possessed a lot of magical objects each, but, well, it's a start."

Hermione reached for the parchment and scanned it. "It's a start. Good work, Lucy."

"Thanks." I busied myself with my can of corned beef hash while Hermione and Harry looked over the list. "Anyway, that's what I've learned. Feel free to go through all of the other notes I've taken, but I think the list of magical objects either owned or invented by the Hogwarts founders is the most important document we have right now."

"There's a lot left in that book, assuming you placed that bookmark in the spot where you left off," Harry observed. "What's the rest of the book about?"

"I skimmed it earlier, and it looks like it discusses the foundation of other wizarding schools. The next section appears to be about Mahoutokoro. It's in Japan."

"Is Ilvermorny in there?" Harry asked. "With all we've learned about their magic system in the past couple years, maybe that's a good place to read about next."

I shook my head. "No, it was founded in the seventeenth century, and this book was written in the tenth century, within a couple of decades of the founding of Hogwarts. This book talks about Hogwarts, Mahoutokoro, Castelobruxo, and Uagadou."

"Do you think the discussion of the other schools will be relevant?" Hermione looked nervous as she set down the parchment. "I mean — if You-Know-Who went international — "

"I hope not," I whispered. I rested my head down against the table. "I've been thinking about it. Dumbledore gave me this book before he even suspected Horcruxes, as far as we know. I think his only reason for giving it to me was to prepare me for the little obstacle course leading to the Philosopher's Stone. I don't know how much he actually intended for me to read it, you know? I'll keep reading it and see if there's anything of note, but... I don't know, I just don't know. It feels like he left us with a mountain to climb and nothing but an unsolved riddle to help us climb it."

I sighed and pushed myself up from the table, stretching out my aching limbs, since I'd just been sitting for the better part of three days.

"I'll take the Horcrux," I said, extending a hand to Harry.

He passed it off without hesitation, and a bit of light flickered back to life in his eyes. I donned the Horcrux and tried to ignore the familiar sinking feeling.

"Sleep well," I said, taking what was left of my corned beef hash and stepping outside the tent.

We were camped near a lake that night, so I knew I didn't have to worry too much about threats approaching us from the direction of the water, unless the Death Eaters were in the business of recruiting merpeople those days.

I didn't have to worry about external threats much when we were camped so close to the shore, but in the absence of that pressure, the Horcrux whispered to me of the shadows that haunted the shores of every lake I'd ever encountered. Lakes belonged to ghosts.

I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to bring myself to visit Lake Tahoe again, if I ever even had the chance. I wanted my memories of that place to remain as untouched as possible. I didn't want to go back there without Cedric. I'd spent so much time confronting his absence in all of the other places he'd been — school, home, even the hill where we'd camped just a couple nights prior — I wanted to try to leave Lake Tahoe alone. I wanted to remember it fondly, always, I wanted to remember him there, always, I wanted to remember us there, always. I didn't want to go there without him, for fear of haunting such a beautiful place. Or perhaps it was already haunted, and I was doing nothing more than avoiding the ghost waiting for me there.

The Black Lake certainly belonged to ghosts. I'd died there over, and over, and over again. In waking and in dreams, the claws of the Black Lake continued to sink into me, reminding me of all I had lost and all I had never truly known, reminding me of the darkness that lurked beneath the surface of everything, reminding me that Cedric would never ever ever ever save me again. It was only natural that my legs had carried me there of all places the night Cedric died. Something deep inside of me had foolishly hoped that I would find him there, at the center of all of my pain with an encouraging word and a healing touch, like he always was. But his absence there smothered the last flickers of hope with an unrelenting deluge of cold truth — Cedric was gone, forever.

Cedric's absence haunted me on the shore of the lake where I found myself that cold November night as well, the lake whose name I did not know in the middle of the English countryside. I missed him. I wanted to tell him about Helga Hufflepuff's loyalty-driven dark magic. I wanted to know what he thought of it, if he'd ever consider using it, if he thought maybe that magic could somehow be adapted to cure lycanthropy. I missed him. I wanted to tell him about Horcruxes. I wanted to confess to him that when I missed him most, the most selfish parts of me wished Cedric had somehow made a Horcrux, just one, just so he could come back to me. I knew, logically, that I didn't really want that, I didn't want Cedric to rip his soul in two, I didn't want Cedric to have been a murderer, I knew, logically, that he would never have been the same, but I missed him so intensely when I was alone that I wished for even a fraction of his soul to still be with me anyway. The traces of his healing magic, my memories, his portrait and the unsendable letters, nothing was enough to fill the void of Cedric's absence. I knew, logically, that his fractured soul wouldn't be enough either, but in the middle of the darkest nights and the heaviest days, I wished I could cling to another piece of him, the real him, regardless.

And so passed the first few hours of the night. I stared listlessly at the lake, finishing the can of corned beef hash bit by bit when I stirred from my preoccupation with the Horcrux long enough to realize I was still hungry. On multiple occasions, I tried to rip my eyes away from the lake to look at the handful of stars in the sky that weren't obscured by thick clouds, but the Horcrux kept pulling me, and therefore my gaze, down, back to the lake, always back to the lake. Hermione relieved me after four hours and removed the Horcrux from my neck, but I didn't feel much like sleeping, so I stayed out with her.

"How are you feeling now that a couple of days have passed?" I asked.

"I don't know, and I don't care," she mumbled. "Bad. Still bad. I don't care enough to examine whether I'm more angry or sad or scared or whatever it is. I just want to focus on destroying this fucking locket and then the rest of the fucking Horcruxes."

"You must be really upset, if you're using such colorful adjectives," I teased.

She didn't smile. "Yeah. I am."

I reached for her hand and squeezed. "It's going to be okay. You've still got us, and your books. What'd you think of the list I made?"

"I had a dream about a badger protecting a sickly raven so fiercely it was covered in the blood of other creatures by the end of the dream."

"That sounds awful, I'm sorry."

Hermione shrugged. "If anything, I'm most bothered by the fact that it was a raven. The Ravenclaw symbol is an eagle, not a raven."

"That's always bothered me," I replied with a snort. "According to the book, the symbol is an eagle and not a raven because eagles are symbolically linked to strength and immortality."

"Immortality?" Hermione repeated.

"Yeah. Apparently Rowena Ravenclaw's reasoning was that wisdom and knowledge are mightier than anything and therefore eternal. Ravens, on the other hand, are generally considered to be bad omens. They're associated with wisdom too, but I guess Rowena Ravenclaw thought that was a little too on-the-nose."

"It isn't in the nature of a Ravenclaw to be straightforward." Hermione huffed. "That's why the Sorting Hat decided to put me in Gryffindor, you know. My tenacity set me apart from the more, shall we say, dreamy Ravenclaws."

"It's okay, you can say Luna," I told her.

That got a grin out of Hermione, so I grinned too and pressed on.

"I'm glad you were sorted into Gryffindor with the lot of us. I love Luna, I do, but I think being in Ravenclaw would have driven you mad. You're much more comfortable with solid answers than you are with speculative possibilities. Luna, on the other hand, lives rather exclusively in the world of speculative possibilities."

Hermione nodded. "Yes. Exactly. Exactly." She sighed. "We could sure use a bit of her imagination right now, though. She'd say something like 'Maybe if we call out to the sword of Gryffindor, it'll hear us and appear!' And then she'd either be entirely wrong, or eerily right, somehow. I still can't believe — I mean, Harry saying your name actually works."

"Yeah, it does, somehow."

"I don't — I don't know why it didn't work for me. I keep turning that moment over in my head, and I don't know what Harry did differently that made it work. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said, squeezing her hand.

She glanced at me, a little shy, a little mischievous. "Do you know why it worked for Harry?"

"Of course not," I replied. "I didn't think it would work at all, for anyone. Why would I know why it worked for Harry?"

"I just thought — well — maybe I missed something, and you two are...?"

I laughed, an involuntary blush rising to my cheeks. "Hermione Granger, how scandalous of you! Where would we even find the time? We've got a world to save."

"You're right, you're right," she relented, blushing as well. "It was worth an ask."

"Ask him. You would get an entertaining response, I'm sure."

Hermione stared at the horizon for a long moment before speaking again. "How do you bear it?"

"Bear what?"

"Harry being... the way he is. Not realizing just how much you love him and want to love him. You've loved him for so long, and he loves you too, always has, but he hasn't done anything about it yet. How do you bear it?"

"It's not easy," I replied, feeling a bit guilty because he had done something about it, finally. She was right, though, I'd loved him for a long time without much reciprocation. "As silly as this sounds, when you know, you know. I think I've always known. The fact that other people have known, too, helps, but it's a bit frustrating at the same time. Everyone is convinced we're meant to be together except for Harry, apparently, and that's equal parts gratifying and excruciating."

"And what — what do you think everyone else thinks about me with Ron?" Hermione asked in a voice that didn't sound entirely like it belonged to her. "Because I don't know what to think anymore."

"I think you both love each other very much, and I think that it's very unfortunate that this whole little Camping Trip of Doom got in the way of what I was sure was about to be the start of you both waking up and figuring it out."

"Camping Trip of Doom," Hermione repeated with a dry laugh and a shake of her head. "That's ridiculous."

"Am I wrong?"

"No. No, this is a very doomed camping trip. I can't believe Ron, he — I still can't — why do I still — I wish I could hate him, and forget about him, and focus on the task at hand, but I can't. Why do I still miss him, and worry about him, and want him back, even though he's so fucking stupid?"

"Because you love him," I said softly. "And when you love someone, you care about their well-being even when they fuck up."

"It doesn't make sense," Hermione grumbled. "I hate that he still has such a — such a grip on me. I can't stop missing him, I can't stop wishing he was here, I can't stop — I can't stop loving him, Lucy."

"I know." I pulled Hermione into a hug. "I know."

She crumpled against me and wept, sounding completely and utterly defeated by love. For someone who relied so much on steady comforts — books, rules, information and the endless pursuit of knowledge and truth — Hermione's whole world had surely been shaken up by the arrival of Ronald Bilius Weasley all those years ago on the train. Maybe it didn't make a lot of sense on paper, Hermione and Ron, but when they knew, they knew, and, unfortunately for everyone, love never seemed particularly inclined to follow the rules. Love wasn't something that could be studied in a book or brewed in a potion with step-by-step instructions, it wasn't a tangible concept that could be dissected by experts. Love was something that could only be experienced, love was something wild and unpredictable, love was every color on the mood ring swirled up in a confusing mass that was somehow everything and yet nothing, something so complex yet so simple. Love was and always would be something that challenged Hermione Granger's notions of comfort, because for her, comfort was predictability, predictability was safety, safety was knowledge, and knowledge was love. Research was her love language, and knowledge was her love. But for all of her knowledge, I couldn't help but think about just how much Hermione had left to learn about love. We all did. Love was a journey taken one step at a time, but those steps weren't prescribed by rules or fate or even a path that could be followed. Everyone blazed their own trail of love, one experience at a time. Like any good hike, it had easy straightaways and rough patches and steep inclines and sloping descents, the path often twisted and turned, but the journey was worthwhile, every step. Love would see us through whatever came our way next. I was sure of it.

🩵💛❤️💜🩷

We apparated back to the woods the next day, and I was in the process of setting up the wards when I spotted an unusual marking on one of the nearby trees.

"Wait, don't get the tent out yet," I said, stepping closer to inspect the tree. "The ancient rune for Mahoutokoro is carved into this tree."

"What?" Hermione rushed over to see for herself. "Are you sure? I don't recognize it. But then again, we never learned runes from other countries."

"That's exactly what the rune looks like in my book from Dumbledore."

"Is that cause for concern?" Harry asked. "Is Mahoutokoro known for dark magic or something? Should we find a new place to camp?"

"I want to look around first," I replied. "It doesn't feel dark. It's just... interesting."

Without waiting to hear a response from Harry or Hermione, I started wandering, looking for anything else of interest. I was so busy looking at the trees around me that I tripped on something. I didn't fall, I managed to catch myself, but the breath punched out of me anyway when I saw what had tripped me.

It was a small headstone, reading KEIRA ASAMI TAKEDA.

I gasped. "No way. It's Keira."

"Keira? The woman Kreacher mentioned?" Hermione inquired.

Harry crouched down behind me. "The bubotuber pus in the Quidditch robes girl?"

I nodded. "Yes, and yes." I reached forward and gently moved the detritus away from the bottom of the headstone. "She died on the fifteenth of August in 1981. She was 21."

"Is there an epitaph?" Hermione asked.

"'Keira Asami Takeda, born 16 September 1959, died 15 August 1981, 'She deserves to be remembered for all she was and not all she failed to be,'" I read aloud. "Well, that's mysterious. Wait, Harry, didn't Professor Slughorn say something about how Cass and Keira died together?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't remember many details about that night, to be honest. The Felix makes it all a bit fuzzy."

"Maybe Cass is buried somewhere around here too," I said, jumping to my feet.

"Lucy, I don't think Keira's buried here," Hermione said slowly. "Look at how close all of the nearby trees are. Accounting for their roots as well, there's no way a body could... fit there. I think the headstone is just... a tribute."

"Well, maybe there's a 'tribute' to Cass around here too," I replied as I started scanning the trees as well as the ground that time.

"Lu, does it matter?" Harry asked.

"Yes. It does. I can't explain it, but I just know there's something around here that we're meant to find, and I'm going to find it, you two can do whatever the hell you want, I guess, but I — "

"Are you sure it's not the Horcrux trying to lead you into something awful?" Hermione interrupted, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder.

I stopped dead in my tracks and reached up to touch the Horcrux around my neck, focusing for a moment. "I feel... I feel the Horcrux tugging on me a little bit, but it's more than that. My magic, the werewolf magic, feels something here too. I won't be able to rest until I know what it is."

With that, I shook free of Hermione's hand and ran forward, blindly obeying the magic around me that willed me deeper into the woods.

I screeched to a halt when I saw a flash of brown fur. It was a werewolf.

"What the — " I drew my wand and pointed it at the werewolf. "You can't be real, that's not how — "

Before I could finish my sentence, the werewolf transformed into something that had haunted my nightmares since I was a child: Cedric's dead body, obviously mauled by a werewolf. I didn't get the chance to try to make sense of what I was seeing before Cedric was replaced by a dementor, gliding toward me.

"Fuck's sake," I panted. "Riddikulus!"

Rather than transforming into something funny, the dementor dropped to the forest floor and changed form again, this time taking the shape of Danny Everlin, bleeding profusely, crawling toward me, groaning, eyes swimming with tears.

"Riddikulus!" I choked out again.

My dad was replaced by Cedric, his face contorted in anger.

"IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!" the boggart roared as it stepped closer to me.

"RIDDIKULUS!" I shouted back.

Before me, Cedric turned into a headstone. It wasn't his, though, it was too large to be his. No, the name at the top was Everlin. Below it were four names, Danny, Abby, Claire, Lucy, and my name was the only one without a death date, everyone else was long dead.

"Stop it!" I slashed my wand at the boggart desperately. "Riddikulus!"

The boggart shifted form again, just as Harry and Hermione's footsteps reached me. The boggart before me was Harry, stumbling toward me, hand clutching an ever-growing patch of blood on his chest, his glasses knocked askew, every bit of his exposed skin slashed by werewolf claw marks.

"How could you?" the Harry boggart asked me, one bloodied hand reaching for me as it collapsed.

I shut my eyes and imagined something that could make my laugh so I could finish it off. "Riddikulus!"

I opened my eyes to see Harry was no longer injured, instead wearing my favorite jumper of his and wielding the camera I'd given him.

"You know, Muggles usually say 'Cheese' when they see a camera," the Harry boggart said with an impish grin.

I laughed weakly, and the boggart disappeared.

Harry rested a hand on my shoulder. "Are you alright?"

I nodded, a bit breathless. "Yeah. Fuck. I've never had such a hard time with a boggart before. It changed..." I counted the different iterations they had missed. "That was seven different boggarts. What the fuck was that?"

"The Horcrux, I bet," Hermione said. "And I'm sure your heightened emotional magic feeds into boggarts too, which would make it more intense. Let one of us wear the Horcrux now, just in case."

Before I could protest, Harry had removed it from my neck and slipped it on over his own head.

"Do you want to keep exploring?" Harry asked.

"Yeah. Even without the Horcrux on, I still feel... something."

"I feel it too," Harry said, blinking. "Yeah. You're right."

Hermione huffed. "I don't feel anything! We should just leave, before we encounter something worse."

"I don't know how it could get worse than what we just saw," Harry muttered as he walked in the same direction I'd been heading before encountering the boggart. I followed close behind, and Hermione sighed before she started following him too.

The air around us shimmered, and we suddenly found ourselves in what appeared to be a completely different place. Rather than forest floor, there was grass, a nice manicured lawn, beneath our feet. And ahead of us stood what appeared to be the utterly demolished ruins of a once-beautiful mansion.

"What on earth?" Hermione whispered, looking around us, bewildered. "Why did the wards let us in? Where even are we?"

"No idea," I replied.

Harry kept walking forward, either not hearing us or not caring, so the two of us hurried to keep up with him. He didn't stop walking until he'd reached the front steps of the ruins of the house.

I soon saw why he'd stopped so abruptly. Everything about the ruins were charred and mangled, except for one perfect circle in the middle of it all, a carpet that had once been white, completely soaked in blood. It was horrifyingly eerie, seeing such a perfect bloodied circle in the middle of such destruction.

"What happened here?" I asked in a small voice.

"I don't know." Harry's voice was strangled. "This is awful. But there's... Lu, do you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Hermione burst out. "You two are scaring me."

"There's powerful magic here. Something wants us to find it. It's not bad, it just feels... melancholy," I said.

Harry pointed to one of the piles of rubble. "There?"

"Yeah, I'm feeling pulled that direction too," I confirmed.

"I'm staying here," Hermione said, crossing her arms and backing up onto the grass. "You two have fun with whatever you're doing. I'm going to keep watch and make sure we don't have any more unpleasant surprises."

"Alright, Mione," I replied as I moved forward with Harry in the direction he had pointed.

I couldn't explain how it felt, not really, but I could just feel the powerful magic that our surroundings had been steeped in. It beckoned to me, to us, and I was as helpless to it as an object was to a Summoning Charm. When we reached the rubble, I lifted the heaviest chunks of stone and heaviest beams of wood with just a flick of my wand.

In the middle of the rubble, there was a small green box.

"I'll open it," I said immediately, stopping Harry in his tracks. "I feel more confident in what my magic is telling me than whatever the Horcrux might be telling you."

"That's fair," Harry agreed.

I tried to summon the box, but when it wouldn't budge, I hopped over a blackened marble column and knelt in front of the box. To my surprise, it opened the first time I tried lifting the lid, no special spells required.

On top of the box was a note, so I reached for it and started reading.

To whomever this may concern: If you can open this box, it's because one of Tom Riddle's Horcruxes is nearby. Congratulations. Or condolences, depending. Anyway, if you're finding this, it must mean that I'm dead. It's up to you to find and destroy the rest of the Horcruxes now. Sorry. This box should help. It should only open in the presence of one of Tom Riddle's Horcruxes; Carter made it for us before he died. I only ever got to test it on the locket, but I hope it'll work on others too. Carter was good for oddly-specific spells like that.

Speaking of Carter, if, by chance, you're reading this, Tom, fuck you. I know you'll never truly understand the magnitude of what you've done, since you care about no one besides yourself, but fuck you for what you did to him, and Cass, and all of us by extension. I'm sure your son's loss was a blow to you, I hope it was, but you will never understand how much I hate you for the way your brazen quest to live forever has ruined the lives of everyone on this Merlin-forsaken island. I don't remember the last time I saw Cass smile, really smile, and I don't know if I'll ever get to see that again except in pictures. I don't remember the last time I saw Carter really smile, and now, thanks to you, I'll never get to see that again either. I included pictures of us in this box, all of us, for safe-keeping. I can't bring myself to look at how happy they used to be, considering I don't know if they'll ever be that happy again. Fuck you. Just... fuck you.

Merlin, sorry, this letter has turned rather sappy, hasn't it? I suppose these could very well be my final recorded words, so I guess I'll make the most of it. I love Cassidy Eleanor Williams and I hope she believes me. Carter Thomas Riddle is dead, that fucker, and I can't decide if he's a hero or a coward for it. Daphne and Dorcas, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. You were my best friends. Run, hide, deny, do whatever you need to do to stay alive in the hopes of bringing Tom down. I'm sorry Marlene is gone. I'm sorry we couldn't protect her. If one of you dumbass Gryffindors is reading this, I'm sorry to you too. I valued our friendship more than I ever let on. I'm sorry for being so thick about Cass. I really do love her, I promise. Thank you for taking care of her when I didn't, or couldn't, or both. I tried, really I did, but Carter was always better at it. Carter tried his best too. He was a good person. You have to believe that.

Cass... if you're reading this, somehow, I'm so sorry for the way your life has gone, from beginning to end. You didn't deserve any of the bad, you deserved all of the good and more. I hope I was at least part of the good. I'm sorry I wasn't more of it. I hope you can forgive me. If you're the one reading this, keep yourself safe, at any cost. Don't be a hero. Keep your head low until someone else wins the war. Please, love, you've done enough.

I died with the truth. I want to die with the truth. And you, reader, now know the truth. Tom Riddle made Horcruxes. We never figured out how they can be destroyed. We think they all had ties to the founders of Hogwarts. Pretentious white bastard. We think there might be seven, so there are six to go. Good luck. I hope the box helps. And when you get to Tom, do me a favor and tell him Keira Takeda says "Fuck you." And you know what, I feel confident enough in my knowledge of Cass to tell you that she'd say the same.

Good luck.

Keira Asami Takeda.

"Merlin," I breathed. "Harry, this is... this is..."

Before I could even begin to explain everything I'd just read, Hermione screamed.

I jumped to my feet in an instant and sprinted toward her, wand drawn.

Ron's lifeless body was lying on the grass in front of her. Hoping against hope that it was just another boggart, I pointed my wand at him.

"Riddikulus!"

Sure enough, it was just a boggart, and Ron jumped to his feet, unharmed.

"I was thinking about becoming a professor!" the Ron boggart declared with perfect sincerity.

I laughed at that, and Hermione did too after a second, and the boggart vanished.

"Thanks," Hermione said breathlessly. "It looked so... it crept up behind me and then died in front of me..."

"It's okay, I'd be rattled too. Hermione, I found — "

I was once again interrupted by a scream, this time Harry's. Wand still drawn, I dashed in the direction of the sound, ready to finish off the third boggart of the day, ready to turn the dementor into a big hot air balloon —

Except his boggart wasn't a dementor anymore. As I sprinted toward Harry, I realized that it was my form sprawled on the ground, head cracked open against a chunk of stone, blood seeping out from the massive wound, my eyes unseeing, a hand stretched toward Harry. I forced a laugh to try to throw the boggart off as I approached.

"Riddikulus!" I shouted with such force that the boggart disappeared as soon as the spell made contact.

Harry's wide tear-filled eyes met mine, and he hurried over to crush me in a hug.

"I thought it was really you, it was wearing the same outfit and it was coming over to me telling me about how it had taken care of Hermione's boggart and then it tripped and fell and hit its head and — "

"It's okay, it's okay," I murmured, holding Harry tight. "I'm okay. Let's get out of here, before we find any more boggarts. We're bringing the box, though."

Hermione jogged up behind me. "Sounds good to me. What's in the box?"

"I'll explain somewhere far away from here," I said. "Let's get outside of the wards, then apparate somewhere else. We can always come back to this spot, if we decide we need something else."

I grabbed the note and returned it to the box and shut it all up, then held the box tight as we returned to the forest and disapparated. Once our wards had been cast and the tent had been erected and no strange runes had been found on nearby trees, we congregated in the tent, and I read the note again, out loud that time. By the time I was done, Harry and Hermione both had eyes so wide I was worried they'd pop out of their heads.

Harry found his voice first. "What the fuck? What the fuck?"

Hermione yanked the note from my hands to read it for herself, eyes flicking back and forth rapidly.

I reached for the box and laid the pictures side-by-side on the table.

"He was Riddle spawn after all," Harry said as he pointed to a picture. "Look, there he is with Sirius sitting under a tree, and that must be Cass in between the two boys."

"Yeah. Here he is again, with Cass and I'm guessing this is Keira." I tapped the picture just as it looped. Carter Riddle, as he was apparently named, was in between Cass and Keira in the picture at first tugging both girls into a side hug each, but then he jumped out of the way at the last second and forced the girls closer together, laughing as he did so. I looked at another picture, in which those same two girls were kissing, each with a mostly-empty bottle of firewhisky in hand, and nodded. "Definitely Keira, look, it seems like Cass and Keira were lovers, at least for a while."

Harry examined the picture for himself. "My dad's in this one, look. There's Dad, Sirius, Remus... Peter... there's my mum... and a couple other girls... they're all laughing and cheering, I guess Cass and Keira were a lot like us."

I shot a warning glance at Harry, who had very clearly just implied that we, like Cass and Keira, belonged together and our friends were cheering us on and he was aware of that, but fortunately, Hermione was too engrossed with the letter to have heard him.

I hurriedly reached for another picture. "Look, here he is with Regulus, in their Quidditch uniforms."

"I guess that explains how they both somehow knew about Horcruxes," Harry said, "if they were friends. But it looks like Carter was friends with Sirius too, and Cass... how does she fit into all of this? She's everywhere, it seems, but we still know so little about her."

"Here she is, in a picture with just Carter," I said, sliding it over to him. Cass was awkwardly balancing Carter on her back in a somewhat-successful attempt at a piggyback. He was staring at the camera, unamused, while Cass slowly drooped under his weight over the course of the moving picture. I spotted another picture, one of Cass asleep on top of Carter. She was fully on top of Carter, her head on his chest, her arms wrapped around him, her face flushed and her hair messy, clearly sound asleep. Carter's arms were wrapped around her too, and his eyes were closed as well, though he didn't appear to be asleep. "They're teenagers in most of these. It seems like they all got along for most of their lives, especially later in their school careers, at the very least."

"Carter Riddle," Hermione muttered, setting the letter aside. "So You-Know-Who had a son, who somehow knew about Horcruxes, but died, somehow, and Keira died too, maybe at the same time as Cass?"

I blinked. "Harry, do you still have your mum's letter?"

"Er, yeah," he replied. "Why?"

"Didn't she say in her letter that Marlene died around the time of your first birthday?"

Harry nodded, pulling the letter out of his mokeskin pouch. "Yeah, why?"

"Keira died about two weeks after your first birthday," I said, "and Keira said she was sorry that Marlene was gone... what if their deaths were related?"

"They must be," Hermione agreed. She pressed her fingers to her temples as her brows knit together. "Well, we have a box, and about twenty more unanswerable questions."

"It'll be a good way to test future Horcruxes we find," I said. "We can test the range of it, see how close we have to be to the Horcrux to get it to open. I could open it without wearing the locket, but Harry was standing nearby."

"And the house..." Hermione continued as if she hadn't heard me. "How is it that everything was essentially destroyed except for that one perfect circle? How exactly did Keira die? And Cass, she's dead too, if she didn't die with Keira, then what happened? When? How? Why? How much did she know about Horcruxes? And what about Dorcas and Daphne, who were they, how do they factor into any of this?"

"I don't know," I replied, sighing heavily and surveying the pictures again.

I lifted a picture of Carter and Regulus playing wizard's chess in what looked like the Slytherin common room.

"We should focus on what we do know first," I muttered, "and then we can start trying to figure out what it all means. We know for a fact that Regulus Black was a Death Eater, and that he found the locket and intended to destroy it, but didn't get the chance because he drowned in the cave. We know that Keira found out about Horcruxes and promised Kreacher she'd return to destroy the locket, but died before she got the chance."

"I wonder if she's the one who tore the pages out of that book that nearly killed you," Harry mused.

I shrugged. "Merlin only knows. Anyway, back to what we know. We now know that Carter Thomas Riddle went to Hogwarts, and he was friends or at least acquaintances with Cass, Regulus, Keira, and Sirius. He's in pictures with those four people."

"We don't know this for sure, but we can reasonably assume that Cass and Keira were very close," Hermione said, pointing to two of the pictures I hadn't examined yet. In one picture, Cass was in a Quidditch uniform and Keira was braiding her long honey-colored hair out of the way, and in another, Cass was blushing furiously as she placed a daisy in Keira's sleek black hair. "It sounds like it was a bit rocky, but clearly their story is rather intertwined. And Cass and Carter... they were friends too."

Harry snorted. "A Muggle-born being friends with the son of Voldemort. Even with the photographic and written evidence, I find that hard to believe."

"We have no idea how it ended," I said. "We have no idea how anyone's stories ended. I guess no one ever found this box before today. We know that Carter died, and that Keira expected You-Know-Who to be upset about it."

"Cass was upset about it too, sounds like," Hermione remarked. "They must have still been friends."

I stared at the picture of Cass sleeping on top of Carter. They were on a sofa that didn't look like anything I'd ever seen at Hogwarts, and they looked like maybe they were old enough to have graduated already. Maybe their friendship had continued after school.

"You don't think Cass and Carter were... together, do you?" Hermione wondered aloud.

Harry laughed and pointed to a picture of Cass kissing Sirius and then immediately cringing away and wiping her mouth, then a picture that appeared to have been taken that same night where Carter kissed Sirius and then deepened the kiss rather than pulling away like Cass had. "No, I don't think so. Merlin, Sirius was pulling people left and right in school, wasn't he?"

"We'll add that to the list of facts we know about that generation," I said with a chuckle. I sighed and slammed my head down against the table. "Why is it that every time we learn a new piece of information, it just generates more questions?"

Harry echoed my sigh. "I don't know."

"We can't even ask anyone about — about — " Hermione's eyes widened, and she dove into her bag, pulling out the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black. "He said he'd never talk to us again, but maybe we should leave this out, just in case he decides to make an appearance. He's our one connection to the outside world right now. Maybe he's heard something at Hogwarts that will help us."

"He was in Grimmauld Place too!" I added, nodding enthusiastically. "Maybe he knows more about Carter, or Keira! I doubt he'd know anything about Cass, since she was a Muggle-born and we all know how the Black family was about blood supremacy, but maybe he'd have answers about... well, something. Anything."

As it turned out, over the course of the next couple weeks, Phineas was unable to resist dropping in for the occasional visit. He was most intrigued to hear a fourth voice in the tent, mine, and while he was loath to answer any of our questions about what was going on at the school in the present moment, he did mention a couple of details that we found interesting. Ginny got herself banned from Hogsmeade. Snape had banned group gatherings, like Umbridge had done. Muggle radios had been forbidden as well. The Carrows were in charge of all punishment.

In regards to our questions about past students, Phineas was willing to share a little bit more. Cass and Keira had both been members of the original Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore had not extended the same invitation to Carter, nor to Regulus, which we didn't find too surprising. He was not sure who had torn the pages out of the book in Grimmauld Place, but he acknowledged that Carter and Keira had both been somewhat regular visitors to 12 Grimmauld Place, so it was possible that it had been one of those two. He said that he couldn't imagine Regulus Black ever willingly damaging a book, which made Hermione nod appreciatively.

As November turned to December, we found no more definitive answers, but not for lack of effort. We were trying our best, the best we knew how, and every day, every night, we just hoped it would be enough in the end.