Author's Note: Slughorn-bashing. Merciless Marauders. A few Order deaths (though less than canon).

"Master Regulus? Master Regulus?"

Regulus's eyes fluttered open, and he gritted his teeth as he resisted the urge to clutch at his stump. The Dark Lord's Inferi had their meal - he'd seen to that with the last of his strength before ordering Kreacher to get them both out. Pity for them that it was only half an arm. "Bless Severus and his spells," he croaked, gratefully accepting the Restorative Draught his House-Elf offered him. With his remaining hand, he dangled the locket from his fingers and regarded it with utter loathing. "Now only to destroy this."

Amelia Bones, would-be Auror, held out the thing she'd discovered in the Room of Hidden Things. Finding time to sweep the gargantuan room between cramming for her N.E.W.T.s had been difficult, but no one ever called Hufflepuffs slackers. After what they'd done to her brothers, she wasn't going to allow them a single foothold in this school - and, after she and her friends stormed the room last term and retook it from various Death Eater sympathizers by force, she knew there were still "projects" left over. This was merely the worst.

"Is that Ravenclaw's Diadem?" asked Arbor Greengrass, adjusting his spectacles as he examined the thing up close. She pulled him up by the back of his robes.

"It's cursed in addition to whatever else is wrong with it," she told him, waving all her other friends away from their inspection of it. "Damnedest thing - I can't tell what it's cursing, but it's somehow linked to this very school."

"Oh!" cried Mary Abbott, her eyes filling with tears. That came easily to her. For the best - it made those inclined to hurt her let down their guard. The moment wands came out, the born crybaby became the most savage of fighters. "Do you think those terrible, terrible people were attempting to weaken the protections on this school? To let those - those - those monsters in?"

"It's not a bomb, is it?" asked Henry Brown, a Muggleborn with a persistent tendency to compare every new thing he found to Muggle concepts. They'd all given him a hard time about it until he snapped around second year and pointed out that wizards all did the same thing in reverse. That had been humbling.

"Only in the metaphorical sense," Amelia said, waving her wand near the thing. She happened to like her wand. "I've already felt it trying to probe into my head once or twice - I've never been so grateful to my parents for training me in Occlumency from the moment I was old enough to understand the concepts." Her parents - She suppressed tears and forced herself to go on. This was business. "It's hostile, Dark, and potentially extremely dangerous. Everyone, analyze it with all the spells you know. I admit I've got a few blind spots in theoretical Defense. While you're doing that, I'll be fire-calling the Smiths, and then the Prewetts - what's left of them." She swallowed hard. "Those families have enough Defense experts between them that they might know what we're looking at."

"The Unspeakables-" Mary began.

"Have a leak," Arbor cut in, his face strained. "It's an open secret among those in the know. They don't know who and they don't know how much, but they can't be trusted. Not any more." Mary gasped, and began to cry.

For once, Amelia couldn't blame her. That had been about her response when she'd learned - if the most secret recesses of the Ministry weren't safe, what was safe? Did He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named rule the Ministry in all but name already?

It didn't matter. So long as any of them were willing to fight, Britain would not fall.

"Matthew McKinnon definitely landed a Killing Curse on He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named before he was cut down. There was no mistaking it. All the anecdotal reports were true - he's somehow protected himself."

The grim group sat before the fire. The Tonkses, the Longbottoms, Alastor Moody - five people who were at the top of the Dark Lord's potential kill list. Andromeda and Theodore Tonks, who had brought "unspeakable disgrace to the purest family in England"; Frank and Alice Longbottom, who had brought down supporters thought untouchable, the most infamous being the Averys and the Selwyns; finally, Alastor Moody, who had slain the dreadful Animus Carrow in single combat, dueled both Nott brothers at once, and broken the blackmail of three families at once by bringing back their children alive. They had survived longer than any others at the top of that list. It was an honor they ill-liked, and their honor as survivors laid the duty of vengeance heavily upon their shoulders.

"Looks like your idea might have been the right one after all," Alastor continued gruffly, the "handsomest face in England" marred by dark circles and deepening lines. Senseless as it was, he had hardly slept since that horrific battle. Stupid of him. Asking to lose an arm or a leg next battle, if he was lucky - a sleepless man was a dead man in a fight. But every time he began to doze, those images came roaring back... "What did you call it again? A Whore-Crutch?"

"Horcrux," Andromeda said, sitting forward. Her little girl played in the corner of the room obliviously, hair changing colors to match that of the block currently in her hand. She was too young to understand the conversation, thank all that was good. "A vessel for a piece of soul."

"I know murder splits the soul," Alice Longbottom (née Scamander) began, looking ill, "but to tear your soul into two... I just can't imagine..."

"That's part of the point," Andromeda said archly. "You'll excuse me - I was trained as a healer. I'm obligated to imagine half a dozen unimaginable things before breakfast, so that I can work out how to treat them before lunchtime."

"I don't blame her," Ted Tonks said to his wife. "I was raised Anglican, even if I don't know what I am now - my priest always insisted the soul was the one thing this rotten world couldn't touch. I think it would drive the poor old man mad to hear about this."

"Well, talking about it won't make it go away," Frank said, raising his hands. "Where do we think it is? Who has it?"

After some debate, the group settled on one name that stood out above the others: Lucius Malfoy. His father had been one of the Death Eaters' top bankrollers during their rise, that much was an open secret, and the son was worse. Rumor had it that Lucius, who could never bear for his immaculate gloves to be soiled, had a secret fondness for drenching his precious pure hands in ever-so-impure blood. No one could prove it, however - even the Longbottoms were stymied by attempting to pin anything on Malfoy, especially since he'd financially seduced both the Minister and many of the top candidates for her replacement. Apparently generations of selling out rivals to witch-hunters and gratefully accepting their confiscated estates paid off - not that those rumors had ever been proven, either, of course. They were just so persistent that the family had at last abandoned its original surname and embraced their sobriquet of "Ill-Faith" - that was how everyone knew them anyway.

"Are you all right with this, Andromeda?" Alice asked, turning to the witch in question amidst the group's planning of a raid on Malfoy Manor. "Lucius's wife is your sister..."

Andromeda gave a hard, cold laugh. "Have you forgotten, Alice? I have no sisters."

Only her husband knew her well enough to catch the shimmer of tears in her eyes.

Horace awoke in darkness, bound from head to foot. His over-strained heart thundered in his chest - the end had come, the end had come at last -

He bit down hard... and discovered to his utmost horror that someone had removed the cyanide capsule. Whoever had captured him had searched him thoroughly. He was a dead man - Rather, it was worse. He was not a dead man. And he would take a very long time dying.

Despite himself, tears of terror and self-pity started to pour down his face, and his massive frame was wracked with sobs.

"Already? We haven't even started yet!"

Horace's sobs involuntarily redoubled at the voice. "This is just embarrassing," another voice said. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the people who say Pureblood honor is dead are the ones who killed it."

Blinding light shone into his eyes, and he screamed. After a few seconds, his eyes readjusted, and he found himself within a circle of illumination, the rest of the room in darkness and shadows. A figure stepped into his circle - to his shock, it wasn't Tom.

"Regulus?" he gasped, and swallowed hard. "I - I suppose the Dark Lord couldn't be bothered to deal with me himself, then?" he managed, attempting to pull himself together for a last bit of bravery and false cheer. "T-Terrible pity, these u-ungrateful and i-i-irresponsible youth-"

"Try again, idiot. My brother hasn't been seen for months."

He gawped. Something flashed, and his eyes watered. "I just couldn't pass that up - sorry, Prongs," a third voice sniggered.

"Lovely picture, but I'm afraid blackmail will be the least of his problems," said the second.

The figure - Sirius - ignored the two of them in favor of looking down at Horace. Something about his features, though human, reminded Horace of the wide and glassy eyes of a dog about to strike, to tear out a man's throat without provocation... "Awfully safe and sound inside your little bolthole, weren't you, Professor?" he asked, though he hadn't been a student for over a year. "Hogwarts during the year, then your safe-house during the summers. Meanwhile the rest of us swine fight and die - but not you, not your precious hide. Heaven forfend you do anything - except leave your House as a breeding-ground for Death Eaters." He let out a terrible laugh. "Pity for you that Peter here's got a real talent for getting into places where he shouldn't."

Another figure stepped into the light - a rotund, yellow-haired young man who ostentatiously pocketed a camera as he came to stand over Horace. "Great protections," he said in a voice full of false earnestness, then sniggered. "Pity you're in Potions rather than Runes. You left a hole this big that wasn't covered by either the Repeating Russians or the Mayan Manglers." He made a circle with thumb and forefinger and waved it before Horace's staring eyes.

"You couldn't have gotten through that!" Horace protested. "That's absolutely ab-"

"Oh, stop, stop, you're embarrassing me," the rotund man - what had his name been again? Paul? Perry? He'd always been just the boy who hung around Potter and Black - said, dramatically pressing a hand to his chest. "But flattery will get you nowhere. A master never gives away his secrets."

"That's right," said a new figure, stepping into the circle of illumination. "How we got to you isn't important. What matters is that we did."

He made a movement with his wand, and abruptly Horace found himself wrenched into the air by his ankle; the blood rushed to his head, and the world threatened to go black. As he choked and gasped, the young men before him only smiled.

"What you didn't notice, with your head up your bolthole, is that there's been a minor scandal in the past few weeks," James Potter said, stepping forward and shoving a pamphlet under - over - his nose. "Of course, there's nothing strange about a snake snapping at someone's heel. What's strange is that it's going after the biggest snake of all. No honor among thieves, eh, Sluggy?"

Horace only gaped, unable to understand the pamphlet in his congested state. After a moment, Potter flipped the pamphlet wrong-way up, and Horace's heart nearly stopped in his chest.

"Oh, yes, you knew, didn't you?" Potter said, snarling at his shock and shoving it in his face. "I'll just bet you did!"

"Only one line of descent from Slytherin left," Sirius said in a hard voice, "and that's the line even my family couldn't stand. Brother to sister, father to daughter - that line of sick bastards driven out of high society and at last driven to settle down in a pitiful little backwater by the name of Little Hangleton, where the last two males got themselves sent to Little Hangleton for hexing Muggles and then assaulting the Ministry representative who came to investigate. The Ancient and Ignoble House of Gaunt."

"And yet they left no heirs, so the Vole of Death maintained an air of mystery," Potter picked up. "Except some disgruntled Blood Purist took the extra step of following up on the mention of a Squib daughter, and found that sweet little Merope shacked up with a Muggle the moment Daddy landed in Azkaban along with her brother. A Muggle, mind you, who showed up a few months later, crying that he'd been - ah, hoodwinked and taken in. Suppose that's what he thought one day when she botched the Love Potion recipe and he got a good look at what he'd woken up next to. Merope fell completely out of sight after that, though Burke used to tell all his friends, once he was a few glasses to the wind, about a spectacularly ugly and heavily pregnant witch who hocked off Slytherin's last heirloom to him for food money."

"Whoever did the investigation followed up on that by verifying no witch by that name had ever visited St. Mungo's and started in on the nearby Muggle orphanages," Sirius followed. "Lo and behold, he found a record of a little boy named Tom Riddle - oh, I forgot to tell you, that was the Muggle's name. Except that the son was Tom Marvolo Riddle - Marvolo, you know, after the elder of the Gaunt males. And wouldn't you know it, his mother, who died in childbirth, was one Mary P. Riddle. Suppose Muggles just grabbed for the closest name when they heard 'Merope'..."

"Let him down, Padfoot, I don't think he's much longer for this world," Percy said suddenly, looking at Horace.

Sirius complied, dropping him on the ground without much gentleness. Horace gasped like a fish, sweat running down his face, as he writhed about helplessly. "I think that's more fear than ill health," Sirius said callously as he nudged Horace with his foot. "But yes, you know about Tom Riddle, don't you? He used to be your prize student! How much did you teach him, slug? What did he learn?"

"You-" Horace struggled for air. "You have no proof he - the Dark Lord -"

"Yeah, I'm sure Slytherin's got two heirs," Potter drawled. "Some bastard son of the male Gaunts, I suppose? Eh? Stop having me on, Sluggy. The big Heir of Slytherin incident was when Tom Riddle was there, and the last son of Gaunt conveniently got an award for hauling in someone else. Did you really believe that? Did anyone in your snake-pit believe that? Mr. Know-It-All cleverly concealed his ability to go hissy-hissy at snakes for seven years straight in Slytherin's house?" He gave an ugly laugh. "You expect me to believe he didn't head straight in from the Sorting and start yelling 'Oi, see here, everyone, lookit what I can do!'?"

Horace swallowed shakily. "You - I - you have no proof it was - Tom - he -"

"You're stammering like me at a dragon preserve," Piers said dryly. "D'you think we're so stupid that isn't proof right there?"

"But it didn't matter, did it?" Sirius said quietly, beginning to pace around Horace. Horace's eyes followed his movements jerkily. "I mean, no real witches died - just one little Mudblood. And-"

"Sirius."

"Come off it, we both know it's what he thinks of them behind closed doors. Did he ever praise Eva- Lily without throwing in something about 'especially for your birth'?"

"That's him. I don't want you using that word."

"Fine, fine." Sirius turned back to Horace. "Admit it, though. You must have had your suspicions, and you would have taken action if there'd been a single hair harmed on the head of a sweet little pure girl. But who cares about the other sort?"

"I object to these terrible insinuations!" Horace cried. "I'll - I'll have you know, many of my best pupils are Mu- Muggleborn -"

Sirius laughed uproariously. "You give them recommendations so they can get good jobs, then bleed them dry of any benefits they get from them," he said once he was done. "I'm a son of Black, slug. I know how the patronage game works. What of the ones you can't get anything out of? Do you deny you would have turned Slytherin House upside down trying to root out the Heir if he'd been hunting Purebloods?"

His silence gave assent. Potter looked down at him with utter disgust. "So Riddle came out of your House, and a few decades later a totally unrelated Heir of Slytherin - so talented, so powerful, just like everything they said about Riddle - comes back with a silly French name and with contacts already established in the best families, whose patriarchs just happened to be going to school at the same time as Riddle," Potter drawled, voice thick with sarcasm and contempt. "And from there, he draws upon your House for his recruits. They come straight out of school and straight into his service - and I can tell you, some acted like they were already in while they were still studying for O.W.L.s. And you were doing... what, Sluggy? Why didn't Mulciber get tossed out on his curse-loving arse? Why did Bellatrix openly brag of her dreams of 'purification'? Why could Snivellus call Lily Evans a Mudblood in front of the entire school, and never get so much as a reprimand?"

"Don't pretend you didn't know," Perseus said, staring down at Horace with his beady little eyes. "I know a lot more than any of you ever knew. I'm very good at getting in places you'd never expect... the things I heard when we were in school..."

"I'm not a sympathizer," Horace feebly choked out. "I was never - a sympathizer -"

"Liar," Sirius said, bending over him. Horace shuddered at the look in his eyes. "You let Riddle take over as the Head of House in all but name - never opposing him, never saying a word against him, never lifting a hand against his servants. You did more for the cause than his open servants. Whether you admit it or not, slug, you have knelt before the Dark Lord."

"And you'll tell us everything you know about him," Potter breathed, mirroring Sirius. "You don't go seven years without getting to know your star student just a little. His habits, Sluggy. His weaknesses. His hidden servants, the ones even we don't know about. The secret to his immortality-"

Blackness rushed in to -

"Reenervate!"

"Score, Prongs, score!" Philip squealed. In that moment, Horace hated that little vermin.

"Oh yes," Potter said casually, smiling down into Horace's face. "The pamphlet mentioned that Voldemort was once again mortal. So, Sluggy - why wasn't he before? You taught him, didn't you?" Horace gave a great, shuddering sob. "No use denying it, Sluggy. You'll confess it all..."

"Lovely day, isn't it, James?" Remus said casually as he sat at the table at the Leaky Cauldron. The figure across the table from him grunted. "Very eloquent. And you, Sirius?" An agreeable nod and another grunt. "I know, of course, you agree, Peter..." A high-pitched squeal that, unfortunately, could plausibly come from Peter...

He sighed and sipped his Butterbeer. Being the responsible one was always a bother. But, then, someone had to provide the alibis.

So he sat very conspicuously out in the public eye and made a great show of enjoying a pleasant day out on the town. Just a bloke and his three friends... One werewolf and three Transfigured swine...

"What were you idiots doing?!" Aberforth yelled at the injured as he hustled to try to preserve their lives. Trust Albus to be out of the country when needed! Just bloody trust him! Man was a Seer when it came to responsibilities he needed to avoid! "I don't even know what half these curses are! What did you do - walk into the Department of Mysteries, offer to be a test subject?!"

"Don't worry about me - help Benjy-" choked Caradoc Dearborn. Aberforth let out a despairing scream of laughter.

"Can't help a man who's in two dozen pieces! The most I could do 'for' him was cast a binding when the fungus on them began to spore!" He cast another tourniquet on Meadowes, extinguished the fire that had sprung back up on Podmore for the third time, and continued on, grinding his teeth. "The Hell happened? This is overkill even for Death Eaters!"

Meadowes managed to speak. "Those pamphlets - you know -"

"What, those Geminio-made pieces of rubbish?" He might barely be able to recognize his own name in writing, but he'd heard enough about them from his patrons. "Lies put out to disgrace the Dark Lord, and I reckon Albus would have done it himself if he had the wits. Now, hold still!"

"No - we think they're real -" Meadowes took a great, sucking, gurgling gasp. "Old Gaunt residence - we went there to investigate - and -"

"-this," Dearborn finished, gesturing to himself with his good hand. The other was more of an advanced flipper.

Aberforth swore. "So you get anything for it, aside from dead men and fifty years off your lifespan?" He rechecked the diagnostic spells on Moustache Prewett. "The good news is that half your liver's gone!"

"Cor, spare me the bad news," choked out Moustache Prewett, who had turned an interesting shade of yellow.

"It was going to be your whole liver," Aberforth muttered, turning to Clean-Shaven Prewett. "And you've only got about three-quarters of a lung left, but I think that, with the best treatment, you'll be able to go back up to one-and-a-half."

Clean-Shaven Prewett weakly gurgled.

"Be bloody grateful I got a lot of training in rapid care for unknown magical injuries," Aberforth griped, moving back to Meadowes. Officially, that came from his time volunteering abroad during Grindelwald's wars. Unofficially, that was where he'd sharpened them. Albus hadn't cared much for his responsibilities even as a boy, and someone had to be their mother's assistant when it came to Ariana. "So did you get anything for it?"

"A ring," managed Podmore, looking with trepidation down at his legs in case they caught fire again. "Diggle grabbed it and -" He gagged. "He - he was dead by the time we got it out of his hand -"

"A ring?" Aberforth shook his head. "How do you know it's important?"

Meadowes volunteered, "It was what everything - else was - protecting -" She fell into a fit of racking coughs.

"Don't talk, Meadowes, that's for people as can breathe! And how do you lot know it wasn't a trap, eh? One with the ring as a space-filling centerpiece?"

Clean-Shaven Prewett pulled something out of his robe pocket with a trembling hand and extended it to Aberforth. He took it; it was a satchel. He pulled it open gingerly -

He wanted to put it on. He wanted to put it on. He wanted, he wanted - It would give him back Ariana, he could see her again, she could be here again - If he put it on, if he just put it on, he needed to put it on, Ariana -

"Gone," he croaked. "Gone forever."

With shaking hands, he drew shut the drawstrings again and placed it on the table beside him.

"I agree," he said. "That's an evil thing, that." He took a long, shuddering breath. "Soon as I've seen to all of you, I'm destroying it."

Put it on, put it on, do it, do it, he could see her again, just put it on, his heart's desire, just put it on, his little sister would come back, just put it on-

"No matter if it's the last thing I do."

The final battle took place a few weeks later, when a snarling Voldemort was cut off from the rest of his forces by a last-ditch Auror offensive action. "Fools," he hissed as he faced the trembling men and women around him, an enormous snake coiling around his shoulders, "do you not know I am invincible? The man who said he destroyed my immortality lied... I am-"

"I did it!" shouted a wizard, climbing over rubble, a fearful House-Elf at his side. "I destroyed your Horcrux, Riddle, and spread word of your true origin! It was I - Regulus Black!"

"Regulus? You're alive?" cried a witch. "But - I destroyed the Horcrux! It was at Malfoy Manor, as we - my allies - thought!"

"What are you talking about?" shouted a younger witch as the sneer fell off Voldemort's face. "The Horcrux was at Hogwarts! Joab Smith destroyed it!"

"You're all full of goat dung," snapped an old man with piercing blue eyes. "The only 'Horcrux' around here was at the old Gaunt shack in Little Hangleton, and I had to call on favors from old war buddies in France to render that damned thing down to ashes. Bloody thing was more resilient than Albus's ego."

"Huh, so that fat bastard wasn't making up the bit about a seven-part soul," a bespectacled wizard mused, stroking his chin. "Well, Padfoot here challenged his cousin in ritual combat to the death and thus claimed her worldly possessions, so we took care of her Horcrux, and so - O Deadly Vole, when did you get that snake?"

The Dark Lord suddenly had grievous cause to regret both putting up anti-Apparation spells at the battle's beginning and possessing too much arrogance to pack a contingency Portkey, and decided upon discretion as the better part of valor. He retreated under a hail of Killing Curses until the House-Elf, unnoticed, sent a silver dagger sailing at the snake.

Said silver dagger, despite its ornamental appearance, was of goblin craftsmanship and had soaked up many peculiar substances over its centuries of use by the House of Black; it just so happened that one was basilisk venom. The dying snake unspooled from the Dark Lord's shoulders as several Killing Curses impacted his body at once, and, moments later, Lord Voldemort fell like a marionette whose strings were cut.

Tom Riddle was dead.

Author's Note: Eh, decided it would be funny to have a fic in which everyone in the First War, thinking Voldemort has only one Horcrux, goes after a different one. Some notes:

Amelia's friends are all OCs, obviously. One's basically forced to use some when filling in the Marauder generation.

If there seems to be an inconsistency with Andromeda knowing about Horcruxes but Sirius not - I figure that Andromeda played the role of a loyal daughter of Black until her abrupt elopement, and envision her as a studious witch. Sirius pretty much declared his animosity to his family at eleven and goofed off a lot, though he studied a few areas intensely. As a result, Andromeda knows much more about the Dark Arts than Sirius, even if she has no interest in ever using them. On the other hand, she's not an Animagus and never created anything like the Marauder's Map. There are trade-offs.

Up to the reader whether Regulus was still a Blood Purist or just decided that hammering Voldemort along Blood Purist lines was the best route for undermining the Dark Lord's supporter base. People have argued that the core Death Eaters knew and cynically just didn't care, but I find it difficult to believe that the self-proclaimed Most Ancient & Noble Houses wouldn't choke on supporting the son of a Muggle and a Squib.

Snape is often depicted as running Slytherin as a Death Eater haven, but Slughorn is the one who presided over Slytherin both when Riddle ran his gang of thugs at Hogwarts and when it was an open secret that a Slytherin gang was grooming recruits to join the Death Eaters after graduation. He's either hugely incompetent or malicious. Under the circumstances, the Marauders viewed that much incompetence as equivalent to malice. His repeated inability to remember Peter's name is a continuation of canon's gag where he calls Ron "Ralph" and "Rupert".

Where Albus canonically disarmed all traps around the Ring but the final one, the hapless Order members managed to go through most of them face-first. I probably should have given them a higher body count, but they're supposed to be skilled wizards and witches, so they defended themselves... somewhat. Any unfamiliar names (save for Fabian and Gideon, whose names Aberforth never bothered to learn) are canonical Order members, though almost all of them died in the first war.

Hope this was an entertaining detour from the standard "one person dispatches all the Horcruxes" plot.

Omake:

In a burst of fire and light, a tall, slender figure in sweeping, starry purple robes appeared, holding his wand aloft in his right hand as he clutched his phoenix's leg in the other. "Fear not!" he cried. "For I am with you."

He looked around at the combatants, wondering why no one was properly crying out with gratitude at the arrival of their salvation. "I, the great Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, am with you!" he announced once more, in case anyone had missed it the first time. Then he stumbled on some lump beneath him. As he regained his balance, he looked again at their oddly expressionless faces and shook his head. Youth these days - so ungrateful. Of course, his brother was no longer "young", but he had always been ungrateful. Perhaps it was some sad congenital condition.

"Is something the matter?" he asked, scratching his beard with the Elder Wand.

Aberforth stepped forward, raising a trembling fist into the air. "You berk! You do only get around to showing up once the hard part's already done, don't you?!"