A Letter to Death, written by Diana Riddle in Albus Dumbledore's office.

I seem to see you everywhere nowadays. Lurking in shadowed corners and behind blood-spattered walls, aren't you tired? So many people are dying; do you ever get to rest? Part of that's my fault, I guess. If it weren't for my father, you wouldn't have to be so exhausted. I'm sorry you'll have to take me soon; I don't want to be a burden on you.

When you come for me, I hope you know that I never meant for any of this to happen. I hope you know that when you come for me, I will hopefully have ended this war that was never meant to start, and then you will finally revert back to the peaceful calm you have grown so used to.

Everyone resents you for taking the ones they love, but I know better. You are an inevitable future, even for someone so desperate to live as my father. I know that when I'm gone, I can trust you to take those who need to be taken and spare those who deserve it. I hope you treat us lost souls who have given their lives for the greater good with kindness and warmth. I hope you know that I will not fight you, in the end--

It was ten o'clock at night in Albus Dumbledore's office, much too late for any disturbance, but alas, there was a vehement knock on the door. "Enter," said Dumbledore, and a panting Harry Potter pushed into the room. His face was red and he huffed out his breaths as if he had run the entire length of the castle. Diana folded her sheet of scrap paper discreetly and tucked it into the leather pouch she had received from Harry for Christmas.

"Good gracious, Harry," said Dumbledore in surprise. "To what do I owe this very late pleasure?"

"I've got it. I've got the memory from Slughorn."

Dumbledore praised him proudly, but Diana stiffened. She knew of the Horcruxes, of course, but this memory will reveal so much more. Her nerves seemed to be tingling with energy as she watched Dumbledore pour the contents of a small vial into the familiar Pensieve.

"And now," said Dumbledore. "Now, at last, we shall see..."

The air was coarse with bubbling anticipation as the three dived into the Pensieve only to land in Professor Slughorn's office. Just like the last time they had watched, it was decorated in wonderful linens and extravagant dining ware as the large group sat around the large table. Just as it had been before, Vera sat between Tom and Slughorn with her hand clasped tightly around Tom's.

"Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?" said Tom just as he had in the tampered memory. And just as it had happened, Professor Slughorn playfully chided Tom, praising him and his girlfriend--his two favorite students.

"Thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you're quite right, it is my favorite. I confidently expect you to rise to Minister of Magic withing twenty years. Fifteen, if you keep sending me pineapple, I have excellent contacts at the Ministry."

Tom merely smiled at the man and the other boys laughed. Vera only sat quietly with her other hand playing with the edge of her napkin.

"I don't know that politics will suit me, sir," he said when the laughter died away. "I don't have the right kind of background."

"Nonsense," said Slughorn briskly, "couldn't be plainer you come from decent Wizarding stock, abilities like yours. No, you'll go far, Tom, I've never been wrong about a student yet."

Tom's eyes seemed to gleam with something evil, but it was so subtle that no one around the table noticed. Diana saw Vera smile ever-so-slightly and squeeze his hand. Again, she was his anchor.

The clock behind them chimed eleven, and Slughorn looked around in surprise.

"Good gracious, is it that time already?" he said. "You'd better get going, boys, and lady, or we'll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow. Same goes for you, Avery."

One by one the boys filed out of the room. Just like in the tampered memory, Tom and Vera stood together, and he whispered something to her. She kissed his cheek and left, and he watched her with an expression oddly akin to awe. He lingered near Professor Slughorn, and Slughorn turned around.

"Look sharp, Tom, you don't want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect..."

"Sir, I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away..."

"Sir, I wondered what you know about...about Horcruxes?"

There was no white fog this time. Slughorn stared at the boy, and Diana could see the atmosphere change. Whether Slughorn realized it or not, it was darker. Colder.

"Project for Defense Against the Dark Arts, is it?"

"Not exactly, sir," said Tom. "I came across the term while reading and I didn't fully understand it."

"No...well...you'd be hard-pushed to find a book at Hogwarts that'll give you details on Horcruxes, Tom, that's very Dark stuff, very Dark indeed."

"But you obviously know all about them, sir? I mean, a wizard like you--sorry, I mean, if you can't tell me, obviously--I just knew if anyone could tell me, you could--so I just thought I'd ask--"

Every word that came out of his mouth, every twitch of his eyebrow, ever movement of his hands was calculated and analyzed. This was a performance, a very impressive one, down to even subtle gestures, all to charm the Professor into giving Tom this information. For a fleeting moment, Diana almost twistedly admired his obvious skill, but that thought was soon banished the moment she even considered it.

"Well," said Slughorn, avoiding Tom's eyes, "well, it can't hurt to give you an overview, of course. Just so that you understand the term. A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul."

"I don't quite understand how that works, though, sir," said Tom.

"Well, you split your soul, you see," said Slughorn, "and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one's body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form..."

Slughorn's face crumpled, and Diana was restless. She twitched with such eagerness that her muscles feel as if they were trying to escape her skin.

"...few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable."

Riddle could no longer contain his excitement. His expression was full of greedy longing, obvious to anyone looking at him.

"How do you split your soul?"

"Well," said Slughorn uncomfortably, "you must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature."

"But how do you do it?"

"By an act of evil--the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage to his advantage: he would encase the torn portion--"

"Torn? But how--?"

"There is a spell, do not ask me, I do not know!" said Slughorn. His discomfort was very evident now, but he did not allude to it. "Do I look as though I've tried it--do I look like a killer?"

"No, sir, of course not," hastened Tom. "I'm sorry...I didn't meant to offend..."

"Not at all, not at all, not offended," said Slughorn gruffly. "It's natural to feel some curiosity to these things....Wizards of a certain caliber have always been drawn to that aspect of magic..."

"Yes, sir," said Tom. "What I don't understand though--just out of curiosity--I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn't be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn't seven the most powerfully magic number, wouldn't seven--?"

"Merlin's beard, Tom!" yelped Slughorn, and Diana fleetingly wondered if her ancestor truly had a beard. "Seven! Isn't it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case...bad enough to divide the soul...but to rip it into seven pieces..."

Slughorn most definitely looked troubled now.

"Of course," he muttered, "this is all hypothetical, what we're discussing, isn't it? All academic..."

"Yes, sir, of course," said Tom quickly. "And, just out of curiosity--could someone, say, split another person's soul...for them? Could you hypothetically be almost...a..." he seemed to be searching for the correct word, "...surrogate?"

It took Diana only moments to understand, and her entire world changed. Her body no longer buzzed with energy, it was dead and numb. She could not hear Slughorn's response, and she could not feel the tug on her arm. She did not know she was traveling back to reality until the three landed on their feet inside of Dumbledore's office, and she could not feel the chill of the night air blowing through the open window.

"This confirms the theory on which I have been working, it tells me that I am right, and also how very far there is still to go..."

Dumbledore and Harry sat, but Diana did not. She was frozen, her eyes staring at some random point of the wall.

"What did he mean, Dumbledore? Did you know?" she said, though it came out more of a statement. Her voice was in a whisper, and her throat tightened like someone was clutching it.

Albus seemed to visibly deflate. "This is something that I have considered, but never was I sure enough to reveal it. If what Tom asked was true--if he had actually done that--"

"I don't understand," said Harry, his eyes flicking between the two. Diana couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, so Dumbledore took it upon himself to answer.

"Tom had asked if it was possible to tear another person's soul," explained Dumbledore. "One can only infer that he asked with the intention of splitting Vera's."

"What does this mean?" whispered Diana.

She did not look at them, and it was silent for many moments.

"I don't know yet," he said quietly, and the vice on her throat loosened and she dropped her head. "Diana, please sit."

She did, though stiffly, and after a few hesitant moments Dumbledore began. "I am sure you understood the significance of what we just heard. At the same age as you are now, give or take a few months, Tom Riddle was doing all he could to find out how to make himself and, apparently, his girlfriend, immortal."

"You think he succeeded then, sir?" asked Harry. "He made a Horcrux? And that's why he didn't die when he attacked me? He had a Horcrux hidden somewhere? A bit of his soul was safe?"

The room was heavy. It pressed onto Diana's shoulders like crushing stone, her body cracking and aching under the pressure. She was sure Harry and Dumbledore felt it too; the heaviness, the tenseness, the foreboding. It seemed like now, everything was changing. They were no longer searching for answers they could not find; they had answers, and they had direction, and everything seemed slightly less muddled. All of them could feel the weight of the world on them right now, but none felt it more than Diana.

"A bit...or more," said Dumbledore. "You heard Voldemort: What he particularly wanted from Horace was an opinion on what would happen to the wizard who created more than one Horcrux, what would happen to the wizard so determined to evade death that he would be prepared to murder many times, rip his soul repeatedly, so as to store it in many, separately concealed Horcruxes. No book has given him that information. As far as I know--as far, I am sure, as Voldemort knew--no wizard had ever done more than tear his soul in two."

Dumbledore paused and gave a hesitant glance toward Diana. "Four years ago, I received what I considered certain proof that Voldemort had split his soul."

"Where?" asked Harry. "How?"

"You handed it to me, Harry," said Dumbledore. "The diary, Riddle's diary, the one giving instructions on how to open the Chamber of Secrets."

"I don't understand, sir," said Harry.

"Did you know, Harry, that when you stabbed the diary with the Basilisk tooth, I felt it?" said Diana suddenly. She stared at the top of Dumbledore's desk mindlessly. "In St. Mungo's. We were the same age, and I was in my bed. It felt like I was being ripped apart only to then be healed, over and over until my throat bled from all of the screaming. It was the worst pain I have ever felt." Her voice had dropped to a pained murmur, and her eyebrows furrowed. "That was a Horcrux, Harry. That diary was one of his Horcruxes, and you destroyed it."

"You destroyed his first Horcrux, Harry," said Dumbledore quietly. "You destroyed a part of his soul that night in your second year."

There was a stunned silence. "Diana, how did you feel it?"

"I don't know," she whispered. "I think--I think that when I was born, he was so damaged that him and I were--were connected, or something," she said. "I think that, maybe, I had inherited a part of his mind. A part of himself."

"Does that mean you're a Horcrux, then?" urged Harry. "I mean, if--"

"No, no, I don't think I inherited his soul, like a Horcrux," she said. "I think we are connected by something, just not his soul. I think I had latched to his psyche because his mind and body was weakened by his torn soul."

Dumbledore nodded solemnly and continued. "Then, Harry, you told me two years later, that on the night that Voldemort returned to his body, he made a most illuminating and alarming statement to his Death Eaters. 'I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality.' That is what you told me he said. 'Further than anybody.' And I thought I knew what that meant, though the Death Eaters did not. He was referring to his Horcruxes, Horcruxes in the plural, which I do not believe any other wizard has ever had. Yet it fitted: Lord Voldemort has seemed to grow less human with the passing years, and the transformation he has undergone seemed to me to be only explicable if his soul was mutilated beyond the realms of what we might call 'usual evil'..."

"So he's made himself impossible to kill by murdering other people?" said Harry. "Why couldn't he make a Sorcerer's Stone, or steal one, if he was so interested in immortality?"

"He did do that, though," said Diana. "Five years ago."

"And there are several reasons why Horcruxes would appeal more to him than the Stone," added Dumbledore. "While the Elixir of Life does indeed extend life, it needs to be drunk regularly, for all of eternity, if the drinker is to maintain their immortality. Therefore, Voldemort would be entirely dependent on the Elixir, which he would never have been comfortable with.

"But now, armed with this information, the crucial memory you have succeeded in procuring for us, we are closer to the secret of finishing Lord Voldemort than anyone has ever been before. You heard him: 'Wouldn't it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces...isn't seven the most powerful magical number...' Isn't seven the most powerful magical number. Yes, I think the idea of a seven-part soul would greatly appeal to Lord Voldemort."

"He made seven Horcruxes?" said Harry, horror-struck. "But they could be anywhere in the world--hidden--buried or invisible--"

"I am glad to see you appreciate the magnitude of this problem," mused Dumbledore calmly. "But firstly, no, Harry, not seven Horcruxes: six. The seventh part of his soul, however maimed, resides inside his regenerated body. That was the part of him that lived a spectral existence for so many years during his exile; without that, he has no self at all. That seventh piece of soul will be the last that anybody wishing to kill Voldemort must attack--the piece that lives in his body."

"But six Horcruxes, then," said Harry, "how are we supposed to find them?"

"You have already destroyed one, Harry," said Diana quietly. "And Dumbledore has destroyed another."

Harry turned to Dumbledore. "You have?" he asked, stunned.

"Yes, indeed," said Dumbledore, and he raised his blackened hand. "The ring, Harry. Marvolo's ring. And a terrible curse was there upon it, too. Had it not been--forgive me the lack of seemly modesty--for my own prodigious skill, and for Professor Snape's timely action when I returned to Hogwarts, desperately injured, I might not have lived to tell the tale. However, a withered hand does not seem an unreasonable exchange for a seventh of Voldemort's soul. The ring is no longer a Horcrux."

"He hid it in the Gaunt's house," said Diana. "That's why Dumbledore has been traveling. He's been researching Tom's life and trying to discover as much as he can."

"Precisely," agreed Dumbledore. "However, we should not congratulate ourselves too heartily. You destroyed the diary and I the ring, but if we are right in our theory of a seven-part soul, four Horcruxes remain."

Diana's mind flashed with different images. A golden cup, a large locket, an indigo crown--

"And they could be anything," said Harry, interrupting Diana's thought. "They could be old tin cans, or, I dunno, empty potion bottles..."

"You're forgetting his trophies," said Diana at once. "He loved to collect trophies. While searching for objects to conceal his soul, he would've felt a certain appeal to hiding them inside something that would be important to him. He liked things with a powerful magical history."

"The diary wasn't that special, though," said Harry.

"The diary was proof that he was the Heir of Slytherin," explained Dumbledore patiently.

"So, the other Horcruxes," said Harry. "Do you think you know what they are, sir?"

"With Diana's bountiful help, I believe I have a decently clear idea. I have therefore trawled back through Voldemort's past to see if I can find evidence that such artifacts have disappeared around him."

"The locket!" said Harry loudly. "Hufflepuff's cup!"

"Yes," said Dumbledore, smiling. "I would be prepared to bet that they became Horcruxes three and four. The remaining two, assuming again that he created a total of six, are more of a problem, but I will hazard a guess that, having secured objects from Hufflepuff and Slytherin, he set out to track down objects owned by Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Four objects from the four founders would, I am sure, have exerted a powerful pull over Voldemort's imagination. I am confident, though, that the only remaining relic of Gryffindor's remains safe."

He pointed his blackened fingers to the wall behind him, to a ruby encrusted sword within a glass case.

And then, for a very long time that night, they discussed in great length the location and object of the different Horcruxes that are left. The facts were still quite muddled for all of them, but indefinitely, they knew a few things--the cup, the locket, and Ravenclaw or Gryffindor artifact, and Nagini.

"Does Voldemort know when a Horcrux is destroyed, sir?" asked Harry. "Can he feel it?"

"That is a very good question," said Dumbledore, "and I believe that the answer is no, he cannot. I think his soul is much too damaged that he no longer feels the connection between himself and his Horcruxes. And, I think, because of Diana's connection to him along with her intact soul, she feels it for him."

And then, it was quiet. They all contemplated the heavy conversation they had just ended.

"My mother," said Diana quietly, "if he really did find a way to create a Horcrux for her, does that...does that mean--"

"I don't know," said Dumbledore. His voice was weak and tired and it pained Diana to hear it. "I don't know."

Outside, the shadowed silhouette of the forest sat before the darkened sky. And, in that moment, with the three tired heroes, they lamented a life that they could have had if it weren't for the cruel clutches of evil and misfortune.