Told you to expect more of this soon! =) Hope you all enjoy it!

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Artemis

           Once again I found myself sitting in another circle for a group discussion about our next plan of action. It was a scene I was becoming all too familiar with, and it was one I was hoping I would be done with soon enough. I promised myself if I ever got out of this alive, I would never participate in another group project.

           Holly stood in the center of the circle, pushing her auburn hair out of her face. She was drained, I could tell. Surely she had been up all night trying to figure out what we were going to be doing. I was hoping she had some good news for us. Once everyone had finally ended their sidebar conversations, she started.

           “Well guys, I have some good news, and I have some bad news,” Holly stated. “And quite frankly I don’t know if the good news outweighs the bad.”

           “What is it?” I spoke for the group.

           “The good news is that we have located the remaining Horcruxes. One is at Hogwarts, hidden in what we think might be a hardly accessible room. One never leaves Voldemort’s side, and the other is the bad news,” she explained.

           “That certainly helps us. The one is probably his snake,” Harry thought out loud. Admittedly, I had thought the same thing. “What is the one at Hogwarts?”

           Holly frowned slightly. “Not exactly sure, but we think it might be a diadem, one belonging to one of the founders. And even if we knew which room it was, it would still be hard to find.”

           “I know exactly what room it is,” I declared, though I was a little unsure. “I think it’s the Room of Requirement. All sorts of items get hidden in there, and not everyone knows how to find it. It would make an excellent hideout for a part of your soul.”

           The rest of the group nodded in agreement. I saw Audrey frown slightly out of the corner of my eye. “What’s the bad news then?” she asked quietly.

           Holly bit her tongue, as if she wasn’t sure how to say it. “It’s… well… I’m sure you all have heard the prophecy. Neither shall live while the other survives. Well… as it turns out, Harry’s a Horcrux.”

           Almost instantly, everyone’s jaw dropped. Admittedly, I hadn’t expected that; it was surely the last thing, or rather person, I expected Voldemort to place part of his soul. “May I ask how that happened?” I inquired.

           Holly took a deep breath. “Well… our theory is that the night he attempted to kill Harry, he accidently split part of his soul unknowingly, and it went a clung to the first living thing it could find, or in other words, Harry. It’s why Harry can speak Parseltongue, and see Voldemort’s thoughts.”

           For some reason, I had a feeling this is something Harry had already thought of. He didn’t seem nearly as shocked as the rest of us, nor did he act like he was really affected by it. He sat there with a straight face, fully knowing what he was probably going to have to do to defeat Voldemort once and for all. For once, I actually knew how he felt; I had basically had a suicide mission a few years back, and it killed me to go through the whole process beforehand knowing I was going to have to die in order for the villain to be defeated once and for all. I knew he had to be feeling about the same then, and I honestly couldn’t blame him.

           “Does he know about this?” Ron asked.

           “Highly doubtful,” Holly stated. “It’s likely that he thinks he only has six Horcruxes.”

           I ran this information over in my head. So we definitely needed to go back to Hogwarts, whether we wanted to or not, and destroy that one. Somehow we needed to get close enough to Nagini to kill her. And somehow we needed to kill Harry and bring him back. Not to mention destroy the other two Horcruxes with us. So much still needed to be done, and we were running out of time.

           “So what are we going to do?” Malfoy inquired. “Obviously we can’t just sit around here and wait for things to take care of themselves.”

           “Well, I think that the smartest idea would be to head back to Hogwarts first,” I brought up. “If we go back, we can destroy the Horcruxes we already have, and we find the one there and destroy it as well.”

           “Oh… it might be wise to mention that we already destroyed the one,” Hermione added quietly. “We destroyed the locket before we got here. I don’t know why we forgot to tell you, but we did. So that’s one less that we have to worry about.”

           Thanks for just now saying that, I thought. “Okay, so we destroy the one we have and find the other then,” I corrected. “And we can assume that Voldemort will probably be close behind us once we get there since he has eyes and ears all over that school now.”

           “And once he shows up, we can take care of the rest of them,” Sebastian added.

           I turned to Holly. “So my final question is to you. Do you plan on following us and assisting us with what’s left?”

           Holly shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t really have much of a choice now do I?”

           I smirked. “I suppose not.”

           Even though the mood of the group had changed, I knew that I definitely felt a bit better knowing that we knew what was left for us to do, even if the tasks and odds weren’t in our favor. I knew that some way, somehow, we were all going to get through this. For some reason, a new spark of energy and motivation erupted inside of me. I stood, hands clenched into fists at my side.

           “Well what are we waiting for? Let’s go back to school,” I exclaimed, though I had to admit that was a phrase I thought I would never have to use after I graduated.