Chaos Rising |BOOK 2| Harry Potter x PJO |Alexandra Marine|

HARRY POTTER

 "What d'you reckon happened to the Cattermoles?"

"With any luck, they'll have got away," said Hermione, clutching her hot mug of tea for comfort. "As long as Mr. Cattermole had his wits about him, he'll have transported Mrs. Cattermole by Side-Along-Apparition and they'll be fleeing the country right now with their children. That's what Harry told her to do."

"Blimey, I hope they escaped," said Ron, leaning back on his pillows. The tea seemed to be doing him good; a little of his color had returned, finally, after the splinching. "I didn't get the feeling Reg Cattermole was all that quick-witted, though, the way everyone was talking to me when I was him. God, I hope they made it.... If they both end up in Azkaban because of us..."

I looked over at Hermione and the question I had been about to ask — about whether Mrs. Cattermole's lack of a wand would prevent her Apparating alongside her husband — died in my throat. Hermione was watching Ron fret over the fate of the Cattermoles.

"So, have you got it?" I asked her, partly to remind her that I was there too. The love birds were getting too close for my comfort.

"Got — got what?" she said with a little start.

"What did we just go through all that for? The locket! Where's the locket?"

"You got it?" shouted Ron, raising himself a little higher on his pillows. "No one tells me anything! Blimey, you could have mentioned it!"

"Well, we were running for our lives from the Death Eaters, weren't we?" said Hermione. "Here."

And she pulled the locket out of the pocket of her robes and handed it to Ron.

It was as large as a chicken's egg. An ornate letter S, inlaid with many small green stones, glinted dully in the diffused light shining through the tent's canvas roof. And next to it, a plain sheet of gold, not even remotely bright as the locket itself, but seemingly even more dangerous- it lay there, in Ron's palm, and he looked at me doubtfully.

"I don't know what it is, either," I shrugged. 

"That doesn't matter," Ron said, "but what's it saying?"

"What?" I frowned. "What's that-" 

"Never mind," Ron blushed. 

"Ron-"

"There isn't any chance someone's destroyed it since Kreacher had it?" asked Ron hopefully. "I mean, are we sure it's still a Horcrux?"

"I think so," said Hermione, taking it back from him and looking at it closely. "There'd be some sign of damage if it had been magically destroyed."

She passed it to me. I turned it around in my fingers, examining the locket.

The thing looked perfect, pristine. I remembered the mangled remains of the diary, and how the stone in the Horcrux ring had been cracked open when Dumbledore destroyed it.

"I reckon Kreacher's right," I said. "We're going to have to work out how to open this thing before we can destroy it."

Sudden awareness of what I was holding, of what lived behind the little golden doors, hit me. Even after all our efforts to find it, I felt a violent urge to fling the locket from me. Mastering myself again, I tried to prise the locket apart with my fingers, then attempted the charm Hermione had used to open Regulus's bedroom door. Neither worked. I handed the locket back to Ron and Hermione, each of whom did their best, but were no more successful at opening it than I had been.

"Can you feel it, though?" Ron asked in a hushed voice, as he held it tight in his clenched fist.

"What d'you mean?"