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A boy with cropped white-blonde hair strutted onstage, a disgusted sneer pasted on his face. He surveyed the audience with obvious contempt for some minutes.

"Come on, Draco!" hissed the author, Regina Noctis, from behind the curtains. She was eager for the disclaimer to be over with so that her story could continue. "Just say the lines, and it'll be over with, all right?"

Malfoy scowled and turned to leave; but when he attempted to walk offstage, a dog collar appeared around his neck, zapping him as he struck the Invisible Fence surrounding the stage. With the tips of his blonde hair singed black, he quickly retreated and complied.

"All Harry Potter characters belong to J,K. Rowling and to no other," he drawled while trying to regain his dignity. "The author of this fanfiction does not wish to infringe on these rights. She is only borrowing them for a short time. Also, any resemblance on my part to a certain Tom Felton is entirely coincidental. My hair, at least, is purely natural."

A neon APPLAUSE sign flashed on over Malfoy's head. Malfoy smirked and bowed as the audience duly applauded—the volume increasing as Regina snuck quietly onstage behind Malfoy, katana in hand, and sliced one of the many ropes tied to the wall behind them.

There was a whoosh of air, and Malfoy looked up just as a metal block labeled "16 TONS" crashed down on top of him.

Susannah, sitting in the middle row, had knocked over her popcorn and was laughing hysterically. "I…bloody…LOVE…Monty Python!" she gasped between giggles.

Harry, sitting next to her, looked askantly at his Defense professor and wondered if Monty Python understood Parseltongue.

The days quickly passed as the weather suddenly took a change for the chillier at Hogwarts. Students were seen bundling themselves up in winter cloaks and multicolored scarves as they hurried through the courtyards to classes, the ice-covered grass crackling under their feet. Hagrid was often seen outside in his garden as soon as the sun rose, his face barely visible under the pea-green muffler and bright orange scarf he bundled over his moleskin coat, frantically working to keep the frost off his precious pumpkins as they grew to superhuman size for the Halloween festivities.

Another common sight on the grounds in the mornings was the Boy Who Lived. Young girls would often line up around the edge of the Lake as he finished his morning work-out, squeeing and swooning dead away as Harry mopped his sweating face off with a towel. True, he had dispensed with the regular school robes and was only wearing a Muggle T-shirt and running shorts (more like running pants, seeing as they were hand-me-downs from his cousin Dudley). But what else could he do if he didn't want to overheat during exercise? It wasn't like he was trying to give his fangirls a good show—it only came as an extra bonus, apparently.

Every morning after his run around the Lake (and extra gymnastic sessions if no one were around to watch—Harry was too embarrassed to try anything aerobic if other students were gaping at him), Harry would grab a bite to eat from Great Hall before class. Invariably he'd meet up with Hermione, or Ron, or Ginny. They would exchange looks, then pass by each other without another word. If it was Hermione, or sometimes Ginny, there would be tears in her eyes, while Ron usually put on a scowl and turned his head away first. However, after Harry saw Ginny snogging Michael Corner at the Ravenclaw table, with both of them looking as if they hadn't slept a wink the night before, Harry did his best to avoid even glancing at Ginny throughout the entire breakfast, especially if her new boyfriend was with her.

What happened next depended on the day of the week. If it was a weekday, Harry and the rest of the Gryffindor and Slytherin seventh-years always had Defense Against the Dark Arts. True to her word, Susannah kept the class on their respective toes. Every other day was Defense practicals, where she would train them in both Magic and Muggle techniques for fighting off an enemy in close combat. Harry noticed that most of her techniques had Japanese names and origins—she had adapted the arts of the ancient Japanese samurai for magical users, showing her students how one could parry and attack with a sword in one hand while firing off spells with a wand in the other. By the time October came round, Susannah was promising to show the class how to throw ninja stars, something she demonstrated on Malfoy during one of his pre-class rants to his fellow Slytherin groupies. One moment, he'd been complaining to Pansy Parkinson of what his father would do "if he knew we were learning low-class Muggle methods"; the next, he was cursing up a non-magical blue streak while pulling a small silver blade out of his right hand. Harry hadn't been the only one sniggering; even Pansy looked rather disgusted by her boyfriend's crying for the Hospital Wing.

Even on the weekends, Harry often met up with Susannah in the morning, privately, for the Occlumency sessions McGonagall had scheduled for them—and for the secret Animagus tutoring Susannah had promised when they'd met by the Lake on that second morning of classes. As it happened, the two sessions were, for the first few weeks, one and the same.

"You see, Harry, becoming an Animagus isn't just about learning the spells." Susannah and Harry were, on Harry's suggestion, locked up in the Room of Requirement that first Saturday. The Room had transformed into a meditation room at Susannah's request, one lined with Japanese straw tatami mats like the ones they used during Defense practice. "Being an Animagus requires you to look deep inside yourself, to search your very soul to find the animal that best represents you as a whole. And that, I've found, is a goal best reached using the ancient method of Zazen meditation, which was what I was going to use to start your Occlumency lessons in any case."

"Zazen? It sounds Japanese." Harry gestured to the tatami mats, and to the katana and wakizashi swords that Susannah had left belted to her slender waist after her morning exercise (she, too, did work-outs in the morning at the same time Harry did, though hers was of a decidedly different nature). "You seem to use a lot of Japanese stuff when you're teaching us."

"That happens to be my area of interest. I grew up in a Japanese-American household, and their magical society in ancient times was perhaps one of the best in blending with their Muggle counterparts." Susannah dropped to her knees, sat down and crossed her legs, closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths as she did so. Harry followed suit, but he wasn't quite sure what she was doing. It seemed to be a meditation of some sort.

"Zazen, you asked." Susannah broke the silence after a few moments, still keeping her eyes closed. "A form of Buddhist meditation in Japan, embraced by samurai and other nobles and by them alone. Perhaps the easiest instruction from me would be, to let go of everything, then to let go of letting go, and to let go of letting go of letting go, and so on."

Harry blinked. "Does that even make sense?"

Susannah laughed at Harry's obvious confusion. "Yes, it will, eventually. Just sit like I do, and practice taking deep breaths and thinking about nothing. Imagine a plain white wall in front of your eyes at all times during this meditation. And let whatever thoughts that float up from your subconscious drift across your mind like clouds on a summer day. Give it a shot."

"Do all Japanese talk in metaphors?" Harry muttered to no one in particular, but crossed his legs and resigned himself to the meditation. It turned out to be much harder than Susannah made it look. It took him all the way to October to manage to get a blank white wall in his mind continuously; and by the time Halloween rolled around, Harry still hadn't figured out what his Animagus form would look like, and he still couldn't resist Susannah's gentle mental prods that she used to test his Occlumency shields. She wasn't as harsh or vindictive as her father, surely—when she managed to penetrate into his mind, Susannah always quickly pulled back before she could see anything of great importance; but Harry was still slightly annoyed that he allowed a Snape of any gender or generation into his mind.

In the afternoons on school days, Harry least looked forward to Snape's Advanced Potions class, where the man would go to any lengths to give the Gryffindors the worst times of their lives. It wasn't until the third week of classes that Harry found the courage to go to the Room of Requirement and retrieve the Half-Blood Prince's Potions textbook; and even then he wasn't about to use it directly under Snape's overlarge, hooked nose. So he had to rely on what he could remember reading from the night before, which was admittedly not much. If Hermione were there to help him, it might have been different, but she and Ron were still not on speaking terms with Harry. Still, any little bit helped, and Harry's performance in Potions marginally improved, much to Snape's contempt. That didn't stop the Potions professor from taking away twice the number of points from Gryffindor as he gave to Slytherin due to "Potter's extreme incompetence."

Harry's favorite afternoon class was a tie between Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures and Tonks' Transfiguration. As the new Head of Gryffindor House, Hagrid made up for whatever anti-Lion bias Snape had tortured them with earlier in the day, and his hut was always open to interested students of all Houses for an after-class discussion session of the day's lesson, complete with tea and rock-cakes that Harry knew better than to accept. When Harry came to one of the meetings, curious since Hagrid had never done anything like this before, he was surprised to discover that it had been Susannah who had suggested to the half-giant the novel idea. Of course, knowing Susannah, Harry supposed he shouldn't have been terribly surprised after all.

Tonks, on the other hand, was an entirely different class of teacher. She was much less cheerful than Hagrid and her old, usual self, but not quite as stern at all times as McGonagall used to be. Still, being an Auror certainly did wonders for discipline, as Tonks managed to be just as demanding as Moody when classes were in session. When she taught, she often had her arm draped across her midsection, an unconscious gesture that showed how much she thought about her unborn child. The baby bump wasn't going to show for a while yet, but Harry had heard that Tonks went to visit Madam Pomfrey once a week, and that her pregnancy seemed to be coasting along right on schedule. Harry came to her office once or twice a week after classes now, usually to comfort the Metamorphagus during one of her part-pregnancy-induced, mostly-husband-abandonment-caused crying sessions.

Evenings were just as crazy as the rest of the day, no matter what day of the week it was. Every other evening, Harry saved some time for a quick letter to his new adoptive father, letting him know what was going on at Hogwarts and what Death-Eater-related information he could find from the gossip mill that was the student body. Moody was pleased to report, in a series of letters in mid-September, that Harry's information had led directly to the arrests of several prominent pureblood wizards and witches, all of whom were now revealed to be Voldemort supporters if not Death Eaters themselves. Harry could almost see Moody's enthusiasm in every ink-splattered word on the parchment as Moody tried to get the words out faster than his hands would let him.

The rest of the time Harry spent on Quidditch. Even with a war raging outside of Hogwarts' sturdy walls, with the Muggle and magical civilian death toll multiplying on every Daily Prophet cover page, nothing could take away the joys Harry derived from flying. And now that he didn't have to work with the D.A. as Susannah was more than adequate in teaching Defense, his schedule allowed him to take on the duties of Gryffindor Quidditch Captain without overly stressing his daily workload. Even though he'd been banned for the last few months of the previous year, Harry showed no signs of having lost his skills as Seeker; the first game against Ravenclaw was an easy win, 250 to nil, also proving that Ron was in fact improving and developing into a masterful Keeper. Harry took no credit for that, as he barely spoke to the youngest two Weasleys during practices anymore, thanks to their ongoing feud over Susannah.

In fact, when Susannah stopped by the Gryffindor locker rooms on the Quidditch Pitch the Friday before Halloween, Harry only realized her presence by the angry snarl emanating from Ron's side of the locker room. When he looked up, still half-struggling into his school robes after the shower, Harry heard a soft gasp and just caught a flash of dark hair disappearing around the corner of the locker room's entrance. Bemused, Harry finished dressing and quickly made his way outside, thinking that perhaps Hermione had peeked in too early and caught sight of her boyfriend undressed—not that Harry assumed she hadn't seen Ron in a greater state of undress before.

Harry rounded the corner of the locker room, and stopped dead as he saw Susannah leaning against the wall, her face half-averted from the entry. What he could see of her face was redder than Ginny's hair.

"Um, hello, Harry," Susannah mumbled, looking more like an embarrassed fifth-year than a Hogwarts professor. "Sorry, I didn't realize you weren't—quite finished yet…"

Harry lost control of the snigger he was biting on, and the dirty look Susannah shot at him made him laugh outright. "No, it's fine, really…I'm actually surprised you hadn't planned that on purpose. Most girls get a peek at us sometime before they graduate," he offered, quite unhelpfully, as he came closer.

Susannah rolled her eyes. "I did not need to know about that Hogwarts tradition," she muttered, then shook herself and pulled out a scrap of parchment from her pocket. Harry took it from her, curious at first, then feeling a chill run up his spine as he read the few words on the parchment. Raising his head, he stared at Susannah, using what little he knew of Legilimency from her coaching to scan the surface of her mind. Sure enough, she'd let her shields down for him to see what he needed to see.

"It's true, then? You've found it?" he asked Susannah, not daring to speak above a whisper.

"McGonagall did, and just this one, at least." Susannah glanced around to make sure no one else was around before continuing in a softer tone. "We'll need to go after it tomorrow. Meet me in my office at eight in the morning." Susannah paused. "And since you know the way best…I hope you'll have figured out by then how to get us back once we're through?"

Harry nodded, his eyes now fixed on the parchment again, making sure that he wasn't hallucinating. Of all the places that he'd imagined one of the horcruxes to be, it was perhaps the most obvious. And yet he'd never even thought of checking there first.

The first one lies in the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry was pacing outside Susannah's quarters by five minutes to eight the next morning; just as the clock struck the hour in the Great Hall, Harry knocked on the door and slipped inside when she told him to enter. He had his Firebolt shrunken and tucked into one pocket and his wand in the other pocket of his baggy jeans, which had been a hand-me-down from Dudley, as had been the white T-shirt he was also wearing. It was tatty on the sleeves (which nearly reached his elbows), but it was more than suitable for the muck they might encounter on their way through the Chamber's entrance.

Susannah was still in the room adjoining her office where, Harry assumed, she slept and otherwise lived when she wasn't working. And it wasn't long after he wandered over to her bookcases, tilting his head to the right to read some of the titles on Occlumency, that she stepped out and closed the bedroom door quietly behind her. She, too, was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt; and glinting around her neck was a golden chain that Harry had never seen her wear before. The chain was for an oval-shaped locket, just the right size for a miniature portrait, made out of gold and resting just over her cleavage on top of the shirt she wore.

"Are you interested in what's inside or outside of my shirt, Harry?" Susannah asked with a trace of amusement when Harry's eyes rested a moment too long at the level of her bosom. Harry flushed, realizing as his professor laughed that she was getting her revenge for the day before.

"Nice locket," he mumbled, fighting to keep his blushing under control. "I've never seen it before…"

"I always wear it, but under my robes, so I hope you've never seen it before!" Susannah laughed, working on pulling her hair out of the way into a tight ponytail while she talked. "It was my mother's. She died shortly after I was born, and Father gave this to me when I started school at Salem. It's all I have of her, so I hate to take it off, you see…"

Harry felt his heart twist a little as Susannah sighed. "I'm sorry," he said quietly, not sure what else to say that would be appropriate. "At least you have something of your mother's, though," he added after a moment's thought. "I don't have much of either of my parents, really. Just my father's pocket-watch, but I only got that back a few months ago."

Susannah offered Harry a small smile. "Thanks, Harry. Here, would you like to see it?" She lifted the chain over her head and held it out for him, the golden chain pooling out and dangling down from her fingers. Harry took the locket, surprised at its weight in his hand, and turned it over in his palm, examining it carefully. The front of the locket had an engraving of a fleur-de-lis, not unlike his father's watch; and when Harry flipped open the locket's lid, he found a relatively-long inscription engraved around the inside in a delicate and tiny script.

To my darling flower. I gave you my heart and everything in it long ago. May you keep it here, close to your own heart, and let our hearts never be twain. Forever yours, J.

"Who's J?" Harry mused, half to himself.

"I've always wondered that myself." Susannah moved behind Harry, peering over his shoulder at the inscription. "I've always supposed that the flower was my mother, but that doesn't explain the J. I honestly don't know—Father never talked about my mother much. I don't even know her full name." Harry jerked his head around in surprise at that. "Yeah, I know, it's weird, isn't it? But Father was really torn up when she died. Can't even stand to talk about her. That was part of the reason I took the Hogwarts job, actually. I know she was a witch and studied here, so I was hoping I could find out who my mother was."

"Any luck so far?" Harry asked, curious now.

Susannah shrugged, quite prettily. "No. Classes are taking far more time than I'd originally thought." Nimbly, she snagged the locket out of Harry's open hand and dropped it over her own head. "Ready to go?" she asked with a playful wink as she opened the door and held it for Harry to go first. Harry willingly went out, turning around as Susannah closed the door, her locket swinging around her neck like a pendulum.

They walked together up to Myrtle's third-floor bathroom, mostly in silence, with Harry considering what Susannah had said about her late mother, and Susannah thinking about goodness-knew-what. Both of their thoughts were interrupted by a shrill wailing, emanating from the girl's bathroom at the end of the corridor. Susannah's hand immediately came up, wand in place.

"Don't worry, that's just Myrtle," Harry assured her, stepping ahead and pushing open the bathroom door. Susannah slowly followed him in, glancing around until her eyes fell on the source of the sound: a stall at the very end, where otherworldly moaning and sobbing noises echoed weirdly in the tiled room. "She's a Hogwarts student who died here. She haunts that toilet, which is why not many come here."

"Harry? Is that you?" Myrtle abruptly stopped her crying and floated through the closed bathroom door. Susannah gasped and fell back at the sight, her hand on her chest, eyes wide. Harry just sighed.

"Yeah, Myrtle. It's me. How're things going here?" he asked as nonchalantly as one could with a silvery ghost floating just in front of his face. "You all right?" he asked Susannah out of the side of his mouth. From his peripheral vision he could see her nod, her eyes fixed on Myrtle.

"Yeah, just—not used to seeing ghosts quite up close and personal like this," she said shakily. "In the States they're rarely corporeal…"

Harry realized that Susannah had never really seemed comfortable around the Hogwarts House Ghosts at the same moment that Myrtle suddenly sniffed, her eyes squinching up behind her pearly lenses. "Oh, it's always the same," she sobbed, tears tracking down her translucent face. "Always talking about me like I'm not there, always talking about ghosts this and uncomfortable that…" Myrtle whirled on a stunned Susannah. "Hasn't it ever occurred to you that some ghosts have feelings?!" Myrtle shrieked at the American.

Susannah winced, which seemed to be answer enough for Myrtle. The ghost let out a loud wail, then turned and swooped back into her stall. The sound of a loud splash let Harry know that she was safe in her toilet again, her muffled cries echoing weirdly against the pipes.

"Erm. Sorry?" Susannah offered a half-minute too late. Harry just chuckled and shook his head, moving over to the sinks to find the pipe with the snake engraved on it. When he hissed at the snake to open, he could hear Susannah whirl around and cry out in surprise as the yawning hole grew in size.

"Ladies first," Harry motioned with a small bow. Susannah rolled her eyes and clambered in, a bit hesitant at first until Harry assured her that it was just a slide. Harry waited until he heard her shrieks of surprise fade away into the distance before plunging in himself.

"YAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Harry landed on his feet at the bottom, where Susannah was waiting for him, her arms crossed in the eternal pose of annoyance. "Thanks for not warning me," she muttered with a half-serious glare. "I have to say, I've never been overly fond of Muggle roller coasters…"

Harry shrugged. "Me neither. But it's like flying, in a way, so I don't mind it too much."

"I actually don't like flying, either—"

"WHAT?!"

"—except to watch Quidditch, that is. It's what happens when your foster siblings are nuts for the game. Good job on that last match of yours, by the way, you really are as good as they say you are."

Harry could feel his cheeks heat up a little. He'd often been praised on his flying talent before, but hearing it from Susannah was something special indeed.

"Well." Susannah cleared her throat, effectively breaking the spell and drawing attention back to the task at hand. "Here we are. Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets."

"Yeah." Harry gestured past the pile of rocks that constituted the cave-in from Lockhart's failed Obliviate. "There's a hole we can climb through back there, and then we'll be in the Chamber proper. Sorry for the mess, it's what Ron and I left after we were here last time…"

"Ron? Ron Weasley?" Susannah carefully stepped around some smaller heaps of rocks and debris as the two of them made their way over to the wall of fallen stone. "Gryffindor, seventh-year, redhead as they come? Doesn't he have a younger sister in sixth year, too?"

"That's right." Harry felt a pang of emotion when he thought of his erstwhile best friend, with whom he was no longer on speaking terms anymore; but that thought was quickly brushed away when Harry found that the hole in the wall that Ron had created was now so small from shifting rocks that there was no chance he could squeeze through. Or had he just grown that much? "Ginny was the one taken into the Chamber five years ago, so Ron and I came to rescue her. Reducto!"

Several blasts later, and with with Susannah's help, Harry had sent most of the rock into oblivion, leaving their way dusty but clear once more. "Haven't been here since then, actually," Harry mused thoughtfully as they continued to walk towards the darkened chamber, torches magically flaring to life as they passed through the corridor. "I wonder if the body of that basilisk is still here…"

Susannah stopped dead in her tracks. "A basilisk? Whoa, wait, hold on right there." She stared at Harry. "You fought a basilisk when you were twelve. And you KILLED it?!"

"Um…yes?" Harry shrugged again. "I mean, it was mostly luck. If Fawkes—that's Dumbledore's old phoenix—hadn't given me the Sorting Hat, I wouldn't have had the Sword of Gryffindor, and I guess I wouldn't have survived long enough to be talking to you right now…"

He trailed off at the look of disbelief in Susannah's eyes. "I see you've been giving Lady Luck a run for her money," Susannah deadpanned.

Harry continued walking, and Susannah joined him a moment later. "Apparently." A few moments of silence later, he added in a deceptively serious tone, "But maybe my being able to speak Parseltongue is an added bonus?"

Susannah snorted, and Harry didn't need to turn around to see the half-amused, half-annoyed look in her eyes. "You really aren't what most would call normal, are you, Mr. Potter?" Susannah asked dryly.

Harry laughed, and when he sensed the dark corridor ahead open up into a vast space, he called out in Parseltongue, "Lights!"

Susannah screamed as the flaring torchlight revealed the almost-perfect corpse of the huge basilisk in front of them. The only defects with the creature were its empty eye sockets and the fact that it was dead. With the normal humidity of Scotland taken into account, Harry was frankly surprised that the basilisk's body was in such pristine condition, and he said as much aloud.

"It's because…of the venom," Susannah said faintly from behind the hand that was pressed over her mouth. "Basilisk venom kills almost instantly, but it's also an excellent preservative, since the basilisk often feeds much later than it kills…" She shook herself all over for a moment, then let her hand fall from her mouth, revealing the greenish tint in her face. "Father would have an orgasm over this." Harry winced at the image. "Sorry, but it's true. Do you know how much he has to pay for basilisk skin and fangs for his potions? It's practically murder."

Harry frowned. As much as he disliked Snape, he was Susannah's father, after all. "If you want it, you can have some. Merlin knows I won't be using it anytime soon." Harry waved to the high walls of the Chamber surrounding them. "But let's get our job done first, shall we?"

"Right, right. Horcrux to find and all that jazz." Susannah immediately started jogging to the walls on Harry's left, around the basilisk's body…and promptly tripped. "OW! Stupid thing, I think it's attached to the flo—oh!"

And to Harry's shock, Susannah disappeared from view with a sharp cry as she reached out to touch the outcropping on the floor that had sent her sprawling.

"Susannah?" No answer. "Susannah!" Harry sprinted over, worry gnawing at him from inside. Where Susannah had fallen, only an imprint of where her body had lain in the dust remained. That, and an emerald green stone jutting out of the floor near where her feet had been…

On an impulse, Harry bent over and grabbed the stone—and with an unfamiliar tugging of magic on his skin, he found himself falling forward into darkness, landing after a few moments on top of something soft.

"Oof!"

"Susannah! Sorry, couldn't help it—"

"I know you couldn't, just get off!"

"I'm trying! Hang on, my pants are stuck on something…I think it's your foot…"

One unhelpful shove later, Harry managed to get untangled from Susannah's long legs and roll off onto the cold stone floor. Panting, he pulled out his wand (which was fortunately not broken) and gasped, "Lumos!"

Susannah matched him, and their twin lights illuminated the once-secret room they now lay in. Harry heard Susannah's sharp intake of breath; as for him, he could barely find the air to breathe deeply enough.

There, on a pedestal made out of black marble that glowed black under the light of their wands, rested a small, double-handled, golden chalice with an engraving of a badger glinting on the front. Without question, it was the very same cup that Tom Riddle had covetously gazed at in the hands of Hepzibah Smith.

"The cup of Helga Hufflepuff." Susannah's tone was awestruck, even though her voice barely carried above a whisper. "Dammit, Harry. I thought it was lost years ago!"

"It was only lost because Voldemort stole it shortly after graduation." Harry pushed himself off the ground and slowly moved towards the cup. Even from a distance, he could feel the Dark Magic pulsing around the chalice. "And he used it to make one of his first horcruxes," Harry said softly, almost not hearing himself say the words. For the cup was singing to him, softly coaxing him one step closer, then another, until his fingers were just about to wrap themselves around the delicate handles…

"Harry, NO!" Susannah was suddenly next to him, forcing his arm down and partly breaking the horcrux' enchantment. Harry felt a surge of irritation, and he could almost hear the cup hissing in anger. But no, it really was hissing. Foolish boy! Don't let her stop you! He could vaguely understand the archaic, accented Parseltongue that it spoke. Take what is rightfully yours! Power, money, anything you desire, shall be yours! Even the girl, you know which one, I can make her yours—

"Harry, snap out of it!" Harry suddenly found himself grabbed roughly by the shoulders and shaken. The hazy mist surrounding his mind suddenly cleared, and he found himself staring into the angry green eyes of Susannah. When she was sure that he was himself again, she released his shoulders quickly.

"Harry, the Dark Magic on that thing is huge," she said quietly. "Don't touch it, or even get close to it. It looked like—you were listening to it, almost…"

Harry shuddered. If it hadn't been for Susannah's intervention, he could have ended up like Dumbledore's hand, or worse. "Yeah, thanks for that." Harry rubbed his arm ruefully. "It was like an Imperio, but worse. I never knew Parseltongue could sound that convincing."

Susannah shot him an odd look before turning to face the cup. "I'm not even going to ask how you know what an Imperius feels like," she muttered, then raised her wand. Harry heard the warning hiss of the cup just before she spoke the spell. "Contineo Horcrux!"

A stream of blinding blue light streamed out from the tip of her wand, surrounding the cup (which protested shrilly to Harry's ears) in a glowing, electric blue ball of magical energy. Once the cup was no longer visible, Susannah cancelled the light, leaving the glowing cage behind. Harry found that the horcrux' voice was greatly muffled by the spell, much to his relief.

"That's loads better, thanks." Before Susannah could stop him, Harry easily Levitated the horcrux off the pedestal and towards them. "I can't hear it anymore," he explained to her confused look.

Susannah immediately looked relieved at that. "Now that we have that—thing contained…" She glanced up, perturbed by the solid stone walls surrounding them. "How do we get out of here—oh, shit."

Harry ignored Susannah's out-of-character, non-magical curse in favor of swearing rather loudly himself, because just at that moment the walls of the small chamber started to grind slowly together, closing in on them on all sides.

It looked like Voldemort had one little booby-trap left behind…and Harry had no idea how to get out of it this time.