(Book 7 FanFiction) Harry Potter: The Last Horcrux

Chapter 21: Loss

Harry awoke to someone roughly shaking him. He tried to turn away and burrow back into his pillow. He'd been having a very pleasant dream for once, involving chocolate Easter eggs, broomsticks, and giggling Snitches. The shaking only increased and soon a loud voice bellowed in his ear.

"Get up, Potter, and do it quickly. Weasley, get out of that bed."

Harry's eyes snapped open as he struggled to clear his head and recognize the voice. The room was shrouded in darkness, the only light coming from the dim glow of a lantern in the hallway. The big old house seemed abnormally silent, almost as if there had been a silencing charm placed outside his door.

Harry fumbled for his glasses, realizing it still must be the middle of the night or just before dawn, at best. He could hear Ron cursing sleepily from his own bed, groaning about the rude awakening. Finally locating his glasses, Harry shoved them onto his face, and his vision sharpened. Sighing, he realized that although he'd managed to eliminate the blurriness, he still couldn't see a thing.

"Who's there?" he asked, continuing to try and clear the sleep from his head.

"Whazzit?" Ron mumbled.

"Ooomf," Harry grunted as something bulky – yet not exactly hard – hit his head. He heard another thud before Ron made a similar sound.

"Pack those rucksacks with whatever you can in two minutes," Moody growled from somewhere near the door. Harry could see Moody's shadow as he moved into the hallway. "Get yourselves down to the kitchen. Keep the lights to a minimum; we're evacuating. Move."

Suddenly wide-awake, his adrenaline pumping, Harry leaped out of bed and yanked open the wardrobe. Using his wand for light, he magically expanded the rucksack Moody had tossed at him. He carefully put Dumbledore's Pensieve inside, along with the strange silver instrument, the Horcrux containers, and his most prized possessions. He'd just begun to throw some of his clothing inside – he was fortunate that he hadn't yet had the opportunity to shop, so he still didn't own very much – when his head burst with excruciating pain.

It was as if someone had suddenly clamped it in a vise and proceeded to squeeze at full force. He fell to his knees with a grunt, grasping his head in his hands as he laid his forehead on the cold floor. A wave of pure, unmitigated fury washed over him before the pain ended nearly as soon as it had begun. If it weren't for the fact that he was on his knees with his head on the floor, he would have thought he'd imagined it. One thing he did know for certain: Voldemort was angry about something – very angry.

"Harry, are you all right, mate?" Ron asked groggily. He'd finally pulled himself out of bed and had nearly tripped over Harry.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Harry said, pulling himself to his feet and shaking his head.

He picked up his wand and resumed stuffing clothing into his backpack, feeling troubled. He hadn't had any kind of vision or felt any emotion from Voldemort in over a year. Dumbledore had suspected he was using Occlumency to keep Harry out. Why now? What had happened that would enrage Voldemort so much that he would temporarily drop his Occlumency shield? Did it have anything to do with the reason they were evacuating headquarters in the middle of the night?

"What are you doing on the floor?" Ron asked, beginning haphazardly to stash items into his own rucksack.

"Tripped," Harry mumbled, not wanting to alarm Ron just yet with the revelation that Voldemort had been in his head again.

"I wonder what happened," Ron said, beginning to look worried. "It must have been something big."

"Yeah," Harry said, zipping up his bag. "Are you finished?"