14 | B I R T H D A Y

this is a little like hell.                           almost romantic.

   "SO WHAT'S HE teaching you? Dumbledore?", Ember asked, tucking her hair back into a ponytail as she blankly stared into the cloudy morning sky.

   She and Harry coincidentally had met in the owlery, both watching Woody and Hedwig grow smaller on the steal grey horizon.

   "Huh?" Harry's eyes flickered towards his sister, cocking an eyebrow as if he hadn't understood a word, before he shrugged and said, "Oh, it's not really teaching. He's showing me memories. Memories of Voldemort. Don't really know where this is leading to." He made a pause, and Ember listened into the silence, before Harry said, "Have you ever heard of Horcruxes?"

   "Hor—what?" Turning towards him, her eyebrow shot up.

   "Horcruxes", Harry repeated that strange sounding word. "I mean ... You've been there. You've been with the Death Eaters and Voldemort. Did they mention something like that?"

   "I have no memory of that, you remember? Never heard of such a word, though. What's it about?"

   "I kinda need to find out", Harry said, rubbing his neck. "No lesson with Dumbledore until I'll get that information."

   "Any idea how to get it?" Ember watched Harry as he shrugged.

   "Slughorn", he briefly replied, as if this was the answer to everything. Ember threw him a questioning look, so he cleared his throat and said, "You know it's true, do you? What they say about me being the Chosen One."

   Ember's eyes grew large; not having lost a thought about this for a long while, she felt her stomach twist.

   "You're kidding!", she exclaimed. "So what, you needed weeks to tell me about this little detail? Say, are you freaking kidding me?" She took a deep breath to steady the upwelling feeling of wrath in her guts. "Okay, fine", she then said. "And what exactly have this Horcrux things to do with you being the Chosen One?"

   "That's for me to find out. You know Dumbledore —"

   "Oh yes, I know him pretty well enough to be sure that he already exactly knows what's up about these." She angryly snorted a bitter laughter. "He's giving you a little work, you know? Talking in riddles like he always does, the almighty old twat. Where is he, by the way? Haven't spotted him at dinner for weeks now."

   "He's on one of his journey's, I s'pose", Harry mumbled, absentmindedly rubbing his scar. "See, I might need your help with that, Em."

   "I already told you I never had heard about something as a Horcrux."

   "Slughorn likes you —"

   "Yeah, but he pretty much adores you, so where's the point?", Ember asked, raising an eyebrow.

   "I kinda messed it up, now he's avoiding me", her brother admitted. "I asked him about the Horcruxes ..."

   "Just tell me you didn't just go to him and did not sugarcoat your question?" She rolled her eyes. "Tell me, Harry, when had Dumbledore's tasks ever been that easy?"

   "In retrospect I knew better", Harry scoffed, turning his head to look at his sister's displeased face. "So will you help me?"

   She shook her head as a gesture of disbelief, but obviously Harry got it all as a 'no' and his face dropped, so Ember sighed. "Of course I'll help you. Just give me a few days to come up with a plan."

   But a few days passed, and so did weeks, and while trying to figure out how to get that information out of Slughorn, March the first arrived.

   For the first time in six years, Ember on this day didn't jump out of bed with a smile on her face before sunrise. She didn't wrap a package full of sweets in awful orange coloured paper, and she did not run to the owlery, to have one of the birds deliver the present before a sleepy redhead would awake from his dreams.

   No. With a deadpanned look, she stared at the baldachin of her four poster bad, pictures — disgusting pictures — of Ron Weasley and Lavender Brown running through her thoughts, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get rid of them.

   "Enough!", she finally hissed at herself, finally leaving the bed. The sun was already rising, and her roommates were still sound asleep.

   For a while, Ember just sat on the edge of her bed, staring out of the circular window right in front of her, before with a sigh she got up. Maybe Harry's plan hadn't been that stupid at all. Maybe confronting Slughorn straight with the topic was the key. But Harry did it somehow wrong. The question was ... How could it be done right?

   Sitting here wouldn't help at all. Visiting Slughorn might at least get her some ideas to find a loophole; something how she could get that information out of him! What could it be at least, what the old potion master tried so hard to keep to himself? So either these Horcruxes were something highly cruel and dangerous, or ... or what?

   Absentmindedly, she had gotten herself ready, putting her long black hair into a pony tail, before she exited the common room, immediately missing the warmness of the Hufflepuff's fireplace. The corridor was cold, almost icy, and she pulled her jacket tighter around her, shivering.

   Slughorn's office was located on sixth floor, and gladly, Ember didn't meet anyone on her way up, so she had enough time to think about a plan. Was a Horcrux a potion? That would make things much easier. But she didn't really think it was ...

   Finally, she found herself in front of Slughorn's door. Raising her hand to knock, Ember froze in motion.

   "Well, a very happy birthday, Ralph —", she could hear Slughorn's loud voice booming through the closed door. " ... and may you have many more —" 

   "Ron!"

   Goosebumps ran up Ember's neck. That was Harry's voice, no doubt. But it was the terrified sound of it, that had her startled for a second, before her heart started to race. There was a loud thud, as if something or someone had been hitting the floor, and Ember didn't hesitate another second; janking the door open, the breath got knocked out of her lungs.

   Ron, laying on the floor, twitched and choked. His skin was turning blue.       "What — but —", spluttered Slughorn, but Ember hardly heard him. Before she knew, she was on her knees, right next to Ron, who was suffocating.

   "Ron!", she yelped, lifting his head up, as if it would make it easier for him to breathe, but immediately she realised, he wasn't suffocating: he had been poisoned. Shattered glass with amber brown liquid spilled all over the carped, assured her in her thought.

   Harry leapt over a low table and sprinted towards Slughorn's open potion kit, pulling out jars and pouches, while the terrible sound of Ron's gargling breath filled the room. Within a second, Harry hurtled back to Ron's side, wrenched open his jaw and thrust a tiny grey stone into his mouth.

   Ron gave a great shudder, a rattling gasp and his body became limp and still. 

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