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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 19
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Chapter Twenty—The Reverse Horcrux

            “It cannot be done quickly.”

            Snape had first said the words hours ago, but they echoed in Harry’s ears now as he stood in front of the ritual circle he and Snape had built for the purposes of constructing the reverse Horcrux. It was in yet another fold of wizardspace, another room in Shaldon’s Garden where Snape didn’t go often. Harry had to wonder if there was an end to them, or maybe not even Snape knew how many of them there were, how many separate, private spaces.

            Although they might learn when both Dumbledore and Tom were here at the same time.

            Snape had used his wand to sear the ritual circle into the wood of the floor, and now he sat off to one side, perhaps five feet away, his legs folded beneath him and his arms crossed as though he was trying to hold his breath inside. His eyes were closed, his face so still that Harry winced to look at him. Inside the circle was the geode, and opposite it on the other side was Harry.

            At the moment, there was nothing Harry could do. Snape had to find out whether he could link the Dark Lord’s soul to his own Dark Mark, and only then could the ritual proceed. So Harry stood as still as he could and practiced over and over again, in his mind, the spells Snape had told him to be ready to cast when Snape emerged from his trance.

            If this worked, if they could do it without Voldemort sensing it, they would have the ultimate weapon against one of the two people Harry hated most in this world.

            If they couldn’t…

            Well, Snape had told him how to tell that it wasn’t working, too. So Harry stood there, with the Elder Wand humming and singing under his hand, and watched the motionless form of Snape sitting across from him, and waited, and hoped.

*

            So still.

            The thought slid along the surface of Severus’s mind and then passed beneath it. Severus continued to breathe, continued to sit, and the thought came back and circled around him, curious and fearless as a tropical fish seeing a human for the first time.

            This was the mental state that Severus had wanted to achieve, and didn’t know if he could, particularly with Harry in the room, the Dark power of his wand like a torch to Severus’s side, and the knowledge of what he was doing beyond that, like a hedge of thorns.

            The water wavered. The thoughts near him almost darted away. Severus focused his patience, concentrated on it, and the water rose back into being and the images of torch and thorns receded.

            He would learn nothing by becoming agitated. He needed to find the right way to locate the Dark Lord’s soul. So he sat there, and willed it into being, and gradually the water wavered around him and turned silver and crystal.

            There was a path there.

            Severus followed the path, without moving, not allowing anything except his breathing to increase as he trotted down it. Now and then something flickered a silver or crystal fin off to the side, as though it wanted to attract his attention. Severus ignored it with supreme ease. He was going somewhere, and he had an appointment to be there, and not here, gaping at strange fish in the water of his mind.

            The path grew thicker and firmer as it arrived at its destination. Severus concentrated, and it was silver and sapphire cobblestones. If he thought of it that way, instead of as a descent into darkness, then he would have the nerve to go forwards.

            The path shimmered out at last, in front of a barrier. Severus studied the barrier. It was a wall made of basalt and black marble and shiny dark purple stones that he had never seen before. In the center was a single shape, a carved shape, a snake and a skull.

            Severus held up his arm. It was the first time he had been conscious of his arm as a limb all during the long walk down this path.

            He knew the Dark Mark intimately, and it no longer dismayed him. He had spent sixteen years on Dumbledore’s side. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he bore the key, and here was the lock.

            Severus walked over and pressed his Dark Mark against the carved gap in the stone.

            A rumble arose that shook the path that had led him here. Severus floated there, and let the concern that he would be trapped slide through him and out. It was one to him whether the path led him back or not. He had other means to construct other ways.

            For a moment, the water around him, the clear water of his mind, spat silver and sapphire lightning. Severus floated, and waited. The sea coiled as if it would crush him, and that was of no importance, either.

            Then the wall slid aside, and Severus stepped into the darkness that lay beyond.

            He knew that he was smiling. The smile slid across the surface of his mind and vanished. From here, he would walk roads through tar and stone. He had little choice, since the Dark Lord had turned his soul into this crisscrossed thing. There were wounds here and there like canyons in the tar that Severus suspected came from creating Horcruxes and then taking them back.

            He had no interest in that, no intent, not when he was in this form and this state of mind, and that kept the Dark Lord from sensing him. Severus drifted gently across the landscape and ended up in a little pocket that had a swaying, black tendril like seaweed. Severus reached out and touched the tendril. It wrapped around his wrist and coiled as if it would keep him there.

            Severus watched it without interest. The tendril, used to defending against someone seeking to harm the Dark Lord’s soul, hesitated, and then withdrew.

            Severus, though, did not leave. He let his hands drift above the tendril, and it yearned up like a young tree reaching for sunlight. His magic attracted it, Severus supposed. It could grow here only as the Dark Lord gave attention to it, this tiny thread of some plan long abandoned, and it sensed that old magic on Severus’s arm that made him like the Dark Lord.

            He did not think as he held out his left arm, and felt the tendril wrap around it. It was with a strong, sickening sensation that it did so, his body swaying for a moment. He felt a shudder ran through him, distant, but he could ignore that without much effort. He reached out and stroked the tendril, admiring the oil-like sheen on it, and then lowered his arm so that it could wrap around him more effectively.

            It entwined him like a snake. Lost and yet intensely aware in the state of mind and magic he had created for himself, Severus felt no fear. He resembled the Dark Lord in his sublime indifference to the menace of the thing, and so it trusted him and came to him.

            When he rose to his feet at last, there was only a small tug, and the tendril only pulled him back once before it loosened from its root. It had accepted him as a substitute for the Dark Lord.

            Severus patted it into place around his Dark Mark, the form that his Dark Lord wore here. Then he began to swim back.

            The tar sucked at his feet sometimes. Severus would pause then, and focus his attention on the tendril. Growing, thriving, with the evidence of how much it liked Severus and was liked by him all around it, it licked out and impatiently thrust itself into the maws of the canyons that confronted them. Each time, the Dark Lord’s soul believed it recognized a piece of itself—as it did, where the tendril was concerned—and let Severus go on his way.

            He floated, and he drifted, and he wondered, for a moment, why it was this easy. He had expected more contest and struggle, if he was being honest. More of an attempt to stop him, more guards on the most precious and vulnerable part of the Dark Lord.

            Only when he reached the end of the sapphire and silver path, and then the sapphire and silver sea, and let himself sink into his body again, did he realize how much he was sweating, how much his muscles ached. It was not easy, Severus discovered as he gasped, forcing air into starved lungs and letting it go again. Nothing like that ever was. He had simply passed into the kind of trance experience, like the kind induced by extreme fasting, that made it seem easy.

            “You did it?”

            Severus opened his eyes. Harry crouched in front of him, and he didn’t hesitate to reach out and put his hand on Severus’s Dark Mark.

            Severus nodded. He could feel the extra weight, a slight pull, around his left arm. He could have flung his hand out and pointed straight to the stronghold of the Dark Lord at that particular moment. He was fairly sure that was a side-effect, but he didn’t care, provided that he had done what he came for.

            From Harry’s wide-eyed glance, the careful way he walked beside Severus to the outside of the ritual circle while Severus cradled his left arm, he at least had no doubts.

            Severus considered what to do with the alien sensation in the middle of his chest that came with the thought of someone else having faith in him, and finally decided that he need do nothing. He stooped when he came to the outside of the ritual circle and raised his arm in the air. The tendril wavered around his Mark, invisible here, outside the landscape of the Dark Lord’s soul, but Severus knew it was there.

            “Now,” he said to Harry, over his shoulder without turning his head.

            Harry audibly started, and then scurried around to the opposite side of the ritual circle and began the spells that Severus had told him to use. Severus did not snort or roll his eyes. It was understandable that Harry would forget, with a different kind of sight in front of him.

            He did not turn his head or move until Harry completed the last chant, the one that charged the ritual circle with the power of the prophecy. The Latin words Harry had spoken said that he understood he was part of a prophecy and did not consent to surrender his part in it to someone else.

            The opposite, Severus thought, of the kinds of spells that the sacrificed Harry might have been pushed to recite, once he had the potions in his system.

            When Severus dared to look down, the ritual circle pulsed with pale fire, rising up and splashing down into the seared groove in the wood. Severus watched the fountains of flame, so thin that he knew he would feel nothing if he touched them.

            Nothing, because that would be the last moment he existed, if he touched them at the wrong time.

            Then it was right, and he knelt and thrust his arm into the fire. The Mark was there, the glittering Dark thing that suddenly had an extra glitter in it, an extra bone to the skull, an extra eye to the snake.

            The Mark thrust itself outwards, and the tendril was there, floating from one landscape into another, the part of Severus’s arm that still imitated the Dark Lord’s magic into the fire of vision. This fire was like an externalized prophecy, as far as Severus understood the theory. It was human will, influencing and creating tools that might help the prophecy to come true.

            Perhaps one could not fight fate, as Albus had found, but one might help it along in a direction of one’s choosing.

            The tendril continued uncurling and moving forwards, now caught deep in the surroundings that would remind it where it had come from because the Dark Lord was also part of the prophecy. Severus managed to tear his eyes from the ripple of shadow in the pale flame and look at the geode in the center of the circle.

            The purple gems down the deep crack in the rock’s surface reflected the leaping and dancing flames.

            Severus raised his wand, and caught Harry’s eyes from the other side of the circle. This was a delicate moment, because what they needed to do required finesse, but also more power than Severus had on his own.

            So they had decided Severus would cast the actual spells, but Harry would feed him his magic.

            Severus wondered for a moment, so wild were Harry’s eyes, so wide was his mouth, if Harry would remember the proper incantations.

            And then Harry closed his eyes and began to chant, and the first sweep of wild, sweet power, like a river in spate, leaped the distance between them.

*

            Harry couldn’t believe that he felt as alive as he did.

            A few days ago, he would have said that someone asking him to give them his magic was the worst thing that could happen. It sounded like something Dumbledore would ask, and Harry was opposed to that on principle.

            But instead, it was something he had chosen to do, and he had to admit, the power was in his teeth like winter wind, in his blood like wine.

            And it was no trouble at all to give it to someone he trusted, not when he knew it would be used for a goal they had in common.

            Harry’s main problem was to make sure that he didn’t pitch head-first into the ritual circle in exhaustion. He opened his eyes and teetered back on his heels, watching Snape, to see if he could see his magic passing through the air. It was so powerful, like a transfusion of blood, that he thought he had to see something.

            There was nothing in the air, though. Snape did have redder cheeks than before, and brighter eyes, and for a moment, Harry thought he saw sparks rise and fall and settle around him, as though they were blowing and billowing out from his hair. But then he lifted his wand, and his voice cut the air like a wolf’s howl.

            “Animum ligo!”

            The spell made Harry tremble. It fell on the geode, and Harry thought he saw it bring a shadow along with it, like a bird in flight. But only the shadow and not the bird was visible, Harry thought wildly, still wavering back and forth where he stood, and locking his legs a second later, so that he wouldn’t land on the geode. Not for Dumbledore’s and Voldemort’s deaths right now would he interrupt Snape’s spellcasting, which had come so far and was so thrilling to watch.

            Snape turned on one heel, his cloak flowing behind him. Harry was reminded for a second of the way the robes of the Snape he’d known would billow as he strode into a classroom, or yelled at a student for being late.

            But this Snape, as he came around, had a transcendent expression on his face that Harry had never seen before.

            “Saxum ligo!”

            Snape had explained that the spells just meant he was binding different things, first the soul and then the stone, but the words still exploded like fireworks, and Harry caught his breath. He wanted to cast like that, he thought, to be so strong and sure. Maybe this Snape hadn’t always known where he stood or who he owed allegiance to, but once he decided, then he would go straight ahead with whatever he had to do.

            With all his heart.

            Snape spun one more time. Harry thought he caught a glimpse of trailing black light from his Dark Mark, and opened his mouth. He didn’t know if that was supposed to be there, and it seemed better to interrupt than to let a wrong spell go ahead.

            But Snape snapped his wand down, and then his whole body shone the same way, so he had a tail like a comet. Harry closed his mouth.

            “Fataliter ligo!”

            Harry mouthed the English equivalent of the words of the spell, compelled by a desire he didn’t understand to say them along with Snape, to join him in at least one part of his spellcasting. According to fate, I bind.

            A long, desperate sizzling noise emerged from the geode, and it rocked on its base. The shadow that Harry had seen spinning over the circle before was back again, high and hard, passing back and forth as though the bird that cast it was searching for a place to land. Harry thought he felt something hard and harsh caress his skin, pulling tight, binding him in ropes that he nearly spread his arms to break.

            But it was best to stand still for this part of the ritual to bind Voldemort’s soul to the stone, Snape had told him. Harry held onto his trust with both hands, and did that.

            The pale flame abruptly all rushed from the circle in the wooden floor into the crack in the geode. Harry couldn’t take his eyes away from the stone because of the ropes of fate holding him in place, and he didn’t want to. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, watching the fire get trapped in those purple crystals and make them glow, alive with flame.

            The geode spun around once, and then the shadow swept into the crack after the fire, and the geode spun around again and flopped over on the ground as though it had gone partially liquid, hiding the crack and the crystals. Harry shivered. He wondered if the spell had somehow damaged it, made it useless for their purposes.

            Then he felt a different kind of harshness brush his skin, not the ropes of fate, which had gone, but something icy and foul that he’d felt before.

            The geode was now a Horcrux.

            Harry stepped slowly back from the circle and looked at Snape. He was coming out of his last turn, or so it seemed. He had dropped, slowly, to one knee, and he bowed his head. He was gasping so hard that Harry worried for him, and almost took a step into the ritual circle before he remembered.

            “Sir?” He worked his way around the outside of the circle instead, up to Snape. “You should get some rest.” He hesitated, then cast a Warming Charm on Snape’s arms and shoulders. His skin there was pale, streaked with sweat. “Do you want something to drink?”

            “I want quiet.” Snape’s hand gestured sharply, and although it wasn’t that similar to the way he’d acted here , it was familiar enough from the other Snape that Harry relaxed. He stepped back and leaned against the wall, watching Snape as he buried his head between his knees and wrapped his arms around the tops of his ears. It looked strange, but Harry reckoned it served the purpose well enough.

            And then he just had to wait and control his tongue, with the urge to question Snape welling up so fiercely in him that he was surprised he didn’t choke on it.

*

            They had done it.

            And the Dark Lord did not know.

            Severus was sure that he would know, if the Dark Lord did, because the connection to the soul had been made through him, through a Mark that was still part of his body. The Dark Lord would start and turn and pluck the cord, and Severus would feel the result as a tingling vibration through the center of him. But so far it had not come, and his barriers and protections seemed to be holding.

            Of course, the Dark Lord might notice at any time. But he had not, not now, and Severus was cautiously prepared to accept that it might not matter. They would dispose quickly of the reverse Horcrux. The Dark Lord would have only a few days, at the most, to notice the missing part of his soul.

            Not even missing, Severus thought, lifting his head and blinking. Not destroyed. Still here, bound to him, if I think of the connection through the Mark as stretching to his soul.

            Severus had to shudder, to think of it that way, but he had been worse things in his life, fouler things, than the anchor that would keep the Dark Lord from destroying the world. And the achievement still pulsed and pounded in his veins, prouder than anything he had done in years.

            “Do you think you can talk to me about what exactly you did now?”

            And there was still a Harry to deal with, one who had not been forced to exploit his own shaky connection with the Dark Lord in order to find answers. Severus had to admit, that was not the least of the factors behind his pride. He raised his head and sighed. “As though someone with your obscured background in Occlumency and Legilimency would understand the process.”

            Harry looked so thoroughly unimpressed with that explanation that Severus’s lips twitched despite his decision to maintain a repressive façade with the brat. “I cast myself into a trance as I spoke to you about previously,” he said. “I made myself calm, and then used the Dark Mark as a key to unlock the Dark Lord’s soul. He neither sensed me entering nor sensed what I took, because as far as he was concerned, it was only a part of himself that was moving around inside his soul.”

            There was a long silence, during which Severus could almost sense Harry’s mind stalking the words he’d spoken like a kitten stalking a bug. Then Harry shook his head and said, “I don’t understand that.”

            Severus spread his hands. “And thus my predictions are fulfilled.”

            Harry rolled his eyes and turned to the reverse Horcrux. “All right, so we got one step done. When are we going to do the next one?”

            “When we have had enough rest to conduct our parts with some grace,” Severus said, forcing himself to his feet. “I require sleep before I attempt to reach out across the miles and influence Black. And I believe that you have a rebel plan to participate in.”

            Harry started and looked at him. “I thought you were coming along for that.”

            “I thought I was, too, until I exhausted myself on the very day that the plan is supposed to take place.”

            Harry tugged at his hair. Severus wanted to tell him to stop that, and not just because it made him look more like James. He contented himself with glaring. Harry was as thoroughly unimpressed as before. “I could try to tell Golden and the rest of them to put it off to a different day,” Harry offered. “We need you there.”

            Severus snorted. “Your fiction of desire is comforting, but unnecessary.”

            “I mean it.” Harry stepped towards him as though he had forgotten the presence of the ritual circle and the plans that swirled back and forth in his mind like eels in mud, forgotten everything except Severus. “I want you with me. Because you’re a good fighter, but also because the last time we split up, you ended up getting captured by Dumbledore and I thought I might never see you again.”

            Severus blinked, unable to speak for a long moment. Then he reached out and laid his hand on Harry’s hair. Harry leaned against his hand before stepping back and saying, “So, should I tell them to put it off?”

            “We are inside my home,” Severus said quietly. “The home whose folds of wizardspace you are going to trust to hold the two most powerful wizards in Britain captive. I think that you need not fear for me.”

            Harry squinted at him. “And that doesn’t answer my question.”

            “You have had a hard enough time gaining the rebels’ trust already.” Severus turned away, and nearly staggered as he went towards the door. He caught the sides of the doorframe just in time. Fainting or stumbling in front of Harry would surely not reinforce his faltering faith that Severus could take care of himself. “There is no reason to hold back and think that you should delay things for me.”

            “Someone should do things for you.”

            Severus heard that only as a mutter, and he was already arguably out of that particular fold of wizardspace anyway, which meant he could choose to ignore it. As he did.

*

            “Then your mentor won’t be coming with us?” That was Golden, her hand on her knife as always, her eyes darting around the drawing room as though Snape would materialize from behind a door or tapestry if she looked hard enough.

            Harry had to bite his lip, hard, at the thought of what Snape would do if he heard Golden refer to him that way. Then he shook his head. No, this one probably wouldn’t mind it, or at least he would say with that sharp drawl that it was preferable to what else a rebel might call someone who had been a Death Eater. But the original Snape from his world would have thrown something.

            “No,” Harry said. “There’s another aspect of the war against—against our enemies that we had to pursue this afternoon.” He didn’t want to reveal too much of their plans against Dumbledore. The more people knew of that, the more chance there was of someone deciding that Dumbledore was “the good one” and getting it back to him. Someone like Percy Weasley, who still gave Harry disapproving looks when he passed him in the corridors. “It exhausted him.”

            Golden sniffed at him. “More important than the war against You-Know-Who?”

            “Another aspect of that war, as I said,” Harry snapped. Maybe it was because he hadn’t known most of Golden’s people in his own world, the way he had the Order, but it was easier to stand up to them. “I have more plans than just the ones that I worked with you on.” He saw the way Golden’s nostrils flared, and added, “That doesn’t mean that your plans have no importance. Just that they’re not the only ones that are important to me.”

            Golden thought about that and decided to accept it. She turned to Heron, who was standing silently at her shoulder. “You have the targets?” she asked.

            Harry turned to watch Heron curiously. Golden had seemed absolutely sure that Heron could get them accurate information about the Death Eater hiding places, and Harry had gone along with that because she was so sure. Harry, though, hadn’t been told how Heron was going to acquire that.

            There was a long sheet of parchment in Heron’s hands, which she held up. “This location in Southern Wiltshire,” she said, tapping it. Finally, Harry saw that it was a map. “This location in the Forest of Dean. And this one on the outskirts of wizarding London.” She smiled sourly, which did weird things to the tattoos around her eyes. “What’s left of it.”

            “How did you find them?” Harry asked, before they could think of something else to put him off. “How did you know that they were there?” Voldemort had taken over so much of Britain, or so many people had said that he had, that Harry thought almost anywhere could be a Death Eater stronghold.

            Heron exchanged a glance with Golden, and received a nod Harry thought was impatient. Heron sighed and faced him again. “With these,” she said, and touched the tattoos around her eyes.

            Harry rolled his eyes when he realized they weren’t going to go on. “Yes, but how does that help you see anything? The only way I ever heard of seeing through someone’s wards was with permission, and I don’t think the Death Eaters gave you permission to see through their wards.”

            Heron laughed, although the sound died so quickly that Harry couldn’t take offense to it. “No. But these tattoos are in the shape of a heron for a reason. When I concentrate, I can conjure a heron at a distance. Only an insubstantial one,” she added, as if she thought Harry might demand to know why she hadn’t destroyed the Death Eaters’ strongholds already. “It can observe and transmit what it sees back to me, but it can’t touch anything.”

            “Huh,” Harry said, blinking. He hadn’t heard of anything like that, but he’d hardly studied all the magic in the world, and for all he knew, Heron and Golden and the people they’d associated with didn’t exist in his world at all, so maybe this form of magic didn’t, either. “So you can be sure the Death Eaters really are hiding in these places?”

            Heron nodded, her face so smug that it distorted the tattoos a little. “Yes. And I know what their defenses and traps are, too—at least from the last time I sent my heron. It doesn’t work if something changes between the last time it was there and the time we attack, of course.”

            “Which is why I’m having her scout up until the last minute,” Golden added, and grinned like a wolf at Harry. “You see the reason why I wanted her with me when we spoke to you under Veritaserum?”

            Harry smiled. “Sure.” His real thought was that Golden probably wanted to have Heron at her side and know what she was doing at all times so that she would be less dangerous. Harry made a mental note to ask Snape if he thought magic like Heron’s could spy through the wizardspace folds of Shaldon’s Garden.

            Then there was a tumbling noise at the door, and Fred and George burst into the room, panting.

            “Sorry we’re late,” Fred said, holding up the little device he cradled in one hand. It looked like an egg, a shiny silver egg with a small crack in the top. Harry eyed it. He had agreed that it was important to have a plan that would take the Death Eaters by surprise and annoy Voldemort as much as possible, but the look of it wasn’t impressive.

            “It’s just—” George began, his eyes shining with excitement.

            “That we were modifying a design that we’d used before, and—”

            “It turned out to be a little trickier than we’d expected.” George grinned, and Harry made out dirt on his face, between the freckles.

            “Is this going to be safe for my people?” Golden folded her hands at her waist, scowling back and forth between Fred and George. “My understanding was that you would make a weapon that would help them, not endanger them.”

            Fred waved his hand loftily. “Merely—”

            “Small problems,” George said. “It exploded once or twice, but since it’s—”

            “Not designed to explode,” Fred picked up, nodding, “it’s not going to do it—”

            “In the field,” George finished. “We merely had to sort out what kind of concussive force we were using, you understand. But it’s not going to explode,” he repeated, in a slightly louder voice, when he saw the way Golden was staring at him. Maybe he understood, finally, that that was the important part of the reassurance to repeat.

            “If you are sure it is safe,” Golden said, and drew her knife, “then you could demonstrate it here.”

            “Safe for the people who set it off,” Fred said, leveling one finger at Golden and ignoring the way that her knife pointed back at her in return. “Not for the ones who suffer from it. And somehow, I don’t think Professor Snape would appreciate us destroying his home. Somehow,” he added, glancing back at Harry.

            Harry smiled. “You’re right. He wouldn’t. So long as it works safely, then we can go and start attacking the Death Eater places, right?” He turned to Golden.

            Golden blinked at him, then set her mouth in a thin line. “I suppose you’ll be the one caught in the backlash if this doesn’t work,” she said. Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing. “You’re assigned to the attack on the London stronghold, Potter, along with Molly, Fred, George, and Arthur Weasley. Heron, Austringer, Linden, you’re coming with me to Wiltshire…”

            Harry tuned out the rest. Just knowing that he was with the Weasleys instead of Golden’s people relaxed him a little. He turned and grinned at Fred. “Is Percy angry at being left behind?”

            “Percy doesn’t get angry,” George said, shaking his head slowly. “How could you think so?”

            “He gets tattling,” Fred said. “He’s already told Mum that he doesn’t think it’s safe for us youngsters to go on the raids.” He clapped his hand dramatically over his heart. “All that made Mum decide was that Gin had to stay behind, since she’s not of age yet. And you can imagine how popular Percy is with her now.”

            “But he isn’t coming?” Harry asked, wanting this repetition for himself.

            “No,” George said, and closed his left eye in a slow wink at Harry. “Mum didn’t want anyone preaching for Dumbledore at her back. And she told Percy that! Poor Prefect Percy.”

            “Did it make him stop talking about Dumbledore?” Harry asked in interest.

            Fred gave him a pitying look.

            “Right,” Harry said, and listened to the Apparition coordinates that Heron provided for the place they’d land in London, then led Fred and George into the fold of wizardspace where their parents waited. Molly’s face was grim, and Arthur stood close to her.

            “Ready?” Harry asked them softly. He knew they weren’t really part of the rebel groups, no matter how strongly they were supporting him, and they weren’t the people who had loved and sheltered him in his own world, either. Fatal to forget the difference, he repeated to himself.

            “Yes, we are,” Molly said, and her face almost blazed with glee. “Now that we have the means to strike back at him, there’s no reason not to.”

            Harry grinned, wondering what Dumbledore would say to that, and shared the Apparition coordinates with the others. Molly and Arthur would Apparate together, as would Fred and George, and Harry would go alone.

            With the egg-like device that George slipped into his hand before he went outside to Apparate.

            Harry eyed it for a moment. It felt heavy, but that was normal, given the weight of the magic packed into it. If it did what Fred and George claimed it did, then it should destroy most of the buildings and maybe the Death Eaters inside.

            And even though Voldemort was insane, Harry knew that he couldn’t afford to ignore the insult. Maybe they wouldn’t even need to establish a Legilimency bond with his mind in order to enrage him.

            Let’s go find out, Harry thought, and tossed the egg-like device in the air, once, for the fun of it, before he clasped it tight and ran after the others.

            He was, after all, a Gryffindor.

*

            unneeded: Well, they’ve managed to swing one of them!

            moodysavage: Thanks! I hope the last chapter won’t disappoint you; this doesn’t spend much time in Harry’s world, more in the AU. But you will get to see at least a few reactions.
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World in Pieces