The Last Horcrux

The Menagerie

After Bella and the others swept out of the menagerie tent Amanda stared at her friends. None of them could think of anything to say.

At last Riot said " Zose people are very bad!"

"Evil," agreed Tori at once.

"It sounds....." said Mark with a thoughtful look on his face. "Like they want to bring back You Know Who."

"I wonder if that ghost woman, Celia Bowen knows about it," Tori mused.

"They were talking about my family, my house," said Amanda slowly. She was thinking hard. Trying to put it all together. "They said that the house was deserted, that Mr. Sev had somehow been lured away."

"What was the object that they were talking about? " asked Mark. "What did they call it?"

"A horcrux," said Tori. She shuddered.

"Vat is a horcrux?" asked Riot.

Amanda was only half listening while Tori explained about horcruxes to the others. (Why Tori would know about Horcruxes to begin with, Amanda wasn't sure, but she was in Slytherin, after all.) Instead, Amanda was thinking about a dusty diary she had found hidden in the library at Spinner's End. About a girl who had been in love with a mysterious, dark haired stranger. A young man named Tom. A young man who had given her something secret, something he told her to keep hidden. What if that man had been....? She knew that Voldemort had been young once. She knew that he had shattered his soul and hidden the fragments in horcruxes. Was it possible.....? Didn't it make sense? What if that young man had been Voldemort, before he started his transition? Hadn't his name been Tom once, Tom Riddle? And what if he had never returned for that secret object that he had given Eileen all those years ago? What if it had stayed hidden at Spinner's End somewhere? Did that mean....? Could it be...? What if a piece of Voldemort's soul was still alive? What if the snake face man could somehow return?

"We have to find Mr. Moony and Mr. Sev," Amanda said.

Her friends looked at her as if she just announced that they had to fly to the moon.

"But Amanda," Mark replied. "We don't know where they are. That snake charmer man - Rodolphus - said that they had been lured away somehow."

"We need to find them,'' Amanda insisted. "It's too complicated to explain, but I think.....I think maybe there has been a horcrux hidden at our house all this time. And if there really is a horcrux still around , that means....." She gulped and an image of the snake-faced man, leering up at her as she hung upside down on a ceiling flashed through her mind. His cruel red eyes, his cold laughter. She shuddered. "That means that Voldemort could still come back."

"Look," Tori called softly. She had been peering under the canvas into the menagerie again. "There's someone else in there."

Amanda peeked under the canvas and saw the last thing she expected. It was Dudley with Gavin and Biscuit. They were staring down at the dead unicorn, their faces lit by the blue glow of its blood that was pooling on the floor of the tent.

Amanda had never been quite so glad to see anyone in her life. "Dudley?" she said. "Gav?" At the sound of her voice, Biscuit looked up and wagged his tail in greeting.

"It's my brothers!" she told the others. She wriggled under the canvas and ran over to Dudley and Gavin. She flung her arms around Gavin before he had time to object and for once, he hugged her back.

"Amanda!" exclaimed Dudley. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

"We're looking for Draco!" replied Gavin.