Across To Elsewhere

Part One: Sixteen - Anything Else

The year that Goku had to wait through to access the Dragonballs once more felt less like a slog than he'd expected. He spent every moment of it training his mind and body, as Mr Popo and Kami both recommend and taught.

Sometimes he'd get a call from Ri during the day, an occurrence that became rarer as the year wore on and she and Hermione stopped doing their research and preparing. When she did call during the day, they'd often simply sit in silence together- as together as they could be, being in two separate realities.

It went unsaid, the quiet worry that the plan wouldn't work. That Goku wouldn't be able to make his wish before Voldemort got to her. Because Ri had been right in that the murderer was planning something.

It was during the night, when he could talk to Ri freely, that Goku learned about what happened in Ri's year.

The first horcrux that they found, they had taken from the Come and Go room at Hogwarts, a day or so after they received the list. Immediately Voldemort had known and he put a hit on their names the moment summer started.

Very quickly Ri and Hermione had become fugitives. They were being hunted by more than just the Death Eaters too.

Through the radio, they knew that anyone that they had known had been called out to be rounded up over the summer, forcing them to go into hiding or to be on the run as well. Those who were caught and defended them were either killed, or tortured for information before being killed. 

News stations and civilians alike reported missing people all throughout Britain. The numbers were growing into the hundreds. Then messages left by Death Eaters had been left in public places for the other magicals to find which kindled a slow rage in the rest of the population that began to demand for the two seventeen year old witches to be captured- thinking that would put an end to it all.

Students who had gone to Hogwarts that year weren't any safer. If they were still there at all. There had been a siege on the school when the term first started. The Death Eaters had invaded. Now all anyone knew was that no one had heard from the students or teachers since then.

It was a bleak and terrible thing. Turning Ri's thoughts away from those happenings quickly became the reason why she called him during the day closer to the end of the year. Their time spent meditating together was invaluable.

Still Goku wished that he could do more for Ri.

They needed to carefully plan their excursion around the new protective detail Voldemort had placed around his horcruxes.

Ri had Dobby bring a letter to Gringotts Bank, explaining to them how a horcrux was hidden in one of their vaults. They sent a letter back through Dobby, stating that despite wanting to rid such an abomination from their halls they were bound by their word that they would only guard that which has been entrusted to them. Other than freeze the Lestrange accounts until the item in question was removed, they could do nothing about it.

A few days later the list of horcruxes changed. It stated how the horcrux from the bank was out of it's stationary hiding place. Now it kept on changing locations, the magics around the item was being added to and replaced at random, and creatures Ri called inferius (a sort of zombie without a soul) were always present around it.

The locket that Ri had gotten with Dumbledore had been a fake, a little note left inside of it. But the locket matched the description of the horcrux that had been listed as being in Grimmauld Place. So Ri had given the dummy locket to Dobby and asked him to find the item that matched it from within the house that had been passed on to her through Sirius' will.

In the meantime, Ri and Hermione practiced their control of fire and shields without their wands so they could make an attempt on the horcrux guarded by the dead.