Phoenix

So Where Next?

The next morning we moved camp to the woods outside a little village. We were hoping to buy some and scout at the same time, so we sent Harry off. We were all disappointed when he said that he couldn't get passed the dementors guarding the city.

Eventually we figured out that the locket made the wearer angry and unhappy. We decided it was best to take turns wearing the locket. We also decided it was best to keep moving camp. If there were dementors, no food was worth getting caught by them.

Food was difficult to find. I hunted in the surrounding forest, but could never find anything more than small birds in the forest worth eating. If I went deeper into the forest I might be more successful, but it wasn't worth the risk of getting caught by myself. Hermione would scavenge for edible berries and mushrooms. Then she would take whatever small bird I had gotten, as well as the berries and nuts, and use whatever spells she could to make it worth eating. Let me tell you that birds and mushrooms got old very quickly.

I didn't mind too much. Shield had taught its agents survival training for a reason. I was mentally prepared and refused to let sup par conditions effect my abilities. Besides, the meals at shield were healthy, not delicious. Harry was holding up surprisingly well, which concerned me a bit. He seemed almost used to these conditions. Hermione was a snappier than usual and tired, but overall she kept herself under control.

Ron was a different story. He had always been used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the Hogwarts house-elves, and hunger made him both unreasonable and irascible. Whenever lack of food coincided with Ron's turn to wear the Horcrux, he became downright unpleasant.

"So where next?"was his constant refrain. He did not seem to have any ideas himself, but expected Harry, Hermione and I to come up with plans while he sat and brooded over the low food supplies.

Accordingly, Harry, Hermione and I spent fruitless hours trying to decide where we might find the other Horcruxes, and how to destroy the one we had already had, out conversations becoming increasingly repetitive, as we had no new information.

As Dumbledore had told Harry that he believed Voldemort had hidden the Horcruxes in places important to him, we kept reciting, in a sort of dreary litany, those locations they knew that Voldemort had lived in or visited. The orphanage where he had been born and raised, Hogwarts, where he had been educated, Borgin and Burkes, where he had worked after leaving school, then Albania, where he had spent his years of exile: these formed the basis of their speculations.

"Yeah, let's go to Albania. Shouldn't take more than an afternoon to search an entire country," said Ron sarcastically.

"There can't be anything there. He'd already made five of his Horcruxes before he went into exile, and Dumbledore was certain the snake is the sixth," said Hermione. "We know the snake's not in Albania, it's usually with Vol—"

"Didn't I ask you to stop saying that?"

"Fine! The snake is usually with You-Know-Who – happy?"

"Not particularly."

I glared at him, and he gazed back with a look of destain. I clenched my jaw, but kept my temper.

"I can't see him hiding anything at Borgin and Burkes," said Harry, who had made this point many times before, but said it again simply to break the nasty silence. "Borgin and Burke were experts on Dark objects, they would've recognised a Horcrux straight away."

Ron yawned pointedly. Repressing a strong urge to throw something at him, I turned away.

Harry ploughed on, "I still reckon he might have hidden something at Hogwarts."