This final chapter is dedicated to @Teddy.J.B He had been reading my re-write since Order of the Phoenix, and it is very sad that I didn't get to know him better. This chapter is for you Teddy.

Previous Chapters:

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003768423

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003769317

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003770117

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003771789

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003772695

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003774876

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003775746

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003776170

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003776958

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003777821

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003778655

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003779874

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003781975

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003784137

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003786670

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003788477

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003788958

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003789922

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003790766

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003792515

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003794298

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003794299

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003795416

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003796242

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003796873

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003797451

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003798336

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003798337

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003799052

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000003799808

(Readers, please let me know if you want to be tagged once I start doing Deathly Hallows, as well as what you think of this chapter. Enjoy this final part of The Half-Blood Prince, thank you so much for reading.)

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@Pervaza972 @CatsAndRoblox @Missy Clara Oswald @SaphireStark

Chapter Thirty-One: The White Tomb

All lessons were suspended, all examinations postponed. Some students were hurried away from Hogwarts by their parents over the next couple of days—the Greengrass sisters were gone before breakfast on the morning following Dumbledore’s death, and Zacharias Smith was escorted from the castle by his haughty-looking father. Colin and his brother Dennis, on the other hand, refused point-blank to accompany their parents home; they had a shouting match by the ground’s gate that was only resolved when Colin convinced them that he could remain behind for the funeral. His parents had difficulty in finding a bed in Hogsmeade, not just because they were muggles, but because wizards and witches were pouring into the village, preparing to pay their last respects to Dumbledore.

Some excitement was caused among the you first and second-years, who had never seen it before, when a powder-blue carriage the size of a house, pulled by a dozen giant winged palominos, came soaring out of the sky in the late afternoon before the funeral and landed on the edge of the forest. Harry watched from a window as a gigantic and handsome olive-skinned, black-haired woman descended the carriage steps and threw herself into the waiting Hagrid’s arms. Meanwhile a delegation of Ministry officials, including the Minister of Magic himself, was being accommodated within the castle. Harry was diligently avoiding contact with any of them; he was sure that, sooner or later, he would be asked again to account for Dumbledore’s last excursion from Hogwarts.

Harry, Theodore, Allison, Tracey, and Terence were spending all of their time together, with Canini and Colin splitting their time equally between Harry's friend group and their House's friend group. The beautiful weather seemed to mock them; Harry could imagine how it would have been if Dumbledore had not died, and they had had this time together at the very end of the year, with both him and Allison's end of year exams finished, the pressure of homework lifted...and hour by hour, he put off saying the thing that he knew he must say, doing what he knew was right to do, because it was too hard to forgo his best source of comfort.

They visited the hospital wing twice a day: Neville had been discharged, but Bill remained under Madam Pomfrey’s care. His scars were as bad as ever—in truth, he now bore a distinct resemblance to Mad-Eye Moody, though thankfully with both eyes and legs—but in personality he seemed just the same as ever. All that appeared to have changed was that he now had a great liking for very rare steaks.

'...so eet ees lucky ’e is marrying me,' said Fleur happily, plumping up Bill’s pillows, 'because ze British overcook their meat, I ’ave always said this.'

It appeared though that for the moment Dumbledore's death would be the only tragedy of the time.

'Has there been any deaths today?' Harry asked Colin, who was reading the Daily Prophet.

'Nope, there have been no deaths or disappearances,' he announced, a little relieved. 'The paper does mentioned the Ministry is looking for Snape but have found no trace of him...'

'Of course there isn’t,' said Harry, who became angry every time this subject cropped up. 'They won’t find Snape till they find Voldemort, and seeing as they’ve never managed to do that in all this time...'

This felt silence over the group, they all new Harry wasn't mad with any of but with Snape, but his outbursts were still awkward. Terence and Colin eventually excused themselves to go to bed. The moment they were gone, Theodore leaned forward toward the group with a look on his face that could only mean he had found something he deemed important.

'Harry, I had been in the library, I believe I have found something related to—'

'R.A.B.?' said Harry, sitting up straight.

He did not feel the way he had so often felt before, excited, curious, burning to get to the bottom of a mystery; he simply knew that the task of discovering the truth about the real Horcrux had to be completed before he could move a little farther along the dark and winding path stretching ahead of him, the path that he and Dumbledore had set out upon together, and which he now knew he would have to journey alone. There might still be as many as four Horcruxes out there somewhere, and each would need to be found and eliminated before there was even a possibility that Voldemort could be killed. He kept reciting their names to himself, as though by listing them he could bring them within reach: the locket...the cup...the snake...something of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s...the locket...the cup...the snake...something of Gryffindor’s or Ravenclaw’s...

This mantra seemed to pulse through Harry’s mind as he fell asleep at night, and his dreams were thick with cups, lockets, and mysterious objects that he could not quite reach, though Dumbledore helpfully offered Harry a rope ladder that turned to snakes the moment he began to climb...

He had shown Allison, Tracey, and Canini the note inside the locket the morning after Dumbledore’s death, and although none of them had immediately recognized the initials as belonging to some obscure witch or wizard they had come across in their different studies, they and Theodore had all agreed they’d keep an eye out for a person with those initials who could have taken the real Horcrux.

‘No, I’m sorry Harry,’ he said sadly, ‘I searched most of the library, the only people we could find with those initials were Ralph Anthony Blakelock, Rhoda Alice Bloodworth, Rupert ‘Axebanger’ Brookstanton, and Rosalind Antigone Bungs, and while I know the note said they were going to die, all these people seemingly died normal deaths…What I actually wanted to tell you has to do with Snape…’

He looked hesitant even saying the name again.

‘What about him?’ asked Harry heavily, slumping back in his chair.

‘Harry, do you remember how Tracey and I found that girl, Eileen Prince,’ he asked tentatively.

‘What about her? We know she wasn’t the Half-Blood Prince,’ said Harry grumpily.

‘But it was her book originally, before she gave it to her son,’ said Theodore.

‘What?’ said both Harry and Tracey.

‘I went back through newspapers from the late forties and early fifties. One I found was a marriage announcement between Eileen Prince and a muggle man named Tobias Snape. I kept digging and sure enough I found a tiny little clipping of a birth announcement that she and her husband gave birth to—‘

‘—murderer,’ spat Harry.

‘Er…yes,’ said Theodore.

Tracey then spoke up. ‘I guess then that I was partially right. Snape’s a half-blood who was proud of his maternal family Prince.’

‘Yeah, that fits,’ said Harry. ‘He’d play up the pure-blood side so he could get in with people like Lucius Malfoy and the rest of them…He’s just like Voldemort. Pure-blood mother, Muggle father…ashamed of his parentage, trying to make himself feared using the Dark Arts, gave himself an impressive new name—Lord Voldemort—the Half-Blood Prince—how could Dumbledore have missed—?’

He broke off, looking out the window. He could not stop himself dwelling upon Dumbledore’s inexcusable trust in Snape…but as Theodore had just inadvertently reminded him, he, Harry, had been taken in just the same…In spite of the increasing nastiness of those scribbled spells, he had refused to believe ill of the boy who had been so clever, who had helped him so much…Helped him…it was an almost unendurable thought now.

‘What I don’t understand is after you accidentally cursed Malfoy how come Snape didn’t turn you in for using his book,’ asked Allison. ‘While the Levicorpus spell spread, the curse you used could only have come from you reading his book, he had to have known you had it.’

‘He knew,’ said Harry bitterly. ‘Like you said he knew when I used Sectumsempra. He didn’t really need Legilimency…He might even have known before then, with Slughorn talking about how brilliant I was at Potions…Shouldn’t have left his old book in the bottom of that cupboard, should he?’

‘That doesn’t answer Allison’s question though,’ said Canini. ‘Why didn’t Snape turn you in.’

‘I’m not sure he wanted anyone to know it was his,’ said Theodore. ‘I would have contained proof he wasn’t as good as Dumbledore thought he was. He couldn’t deny the book was his because someone like Slughorn or even probably Dumbledore would recognize his handwriting. Even if he could deny the handwriting, Dumbledore would definitely know his mother had the surname Prince.’

‘I should’ve shown the book to Dumbledore,’ said Harry. ‘All that time he was showing me how Voldemort was evil even when he was at school, and I had proof Snape was too—‘

‘I’m not sure if “Evil” is the right word,’ said Tracey quietly.

‘You were the one who kept telling me the book was dangerous!’

‘Dangerous, yes as it’s spells weren’t known to the Ministry, it’s owner might have been a jerk or bully, I said that, but I never said its owner was evil or a villain,’ said Tracey sternly. ‘Harry, you’re still blaming yourself for liking that book, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, I put my full trust in a book written by a murderer,’ said Harry.

Allison wrapped her hand around Harry’s.

‘You couldn’t have known. You didn’t know what that curse would do, and you couldn’t have prevented Snape doing what he did even if you had known the book was his. This isn’t your fault Harry, it’s solely Snape’s.’

Harry didn’t say anything, but her voice did make him feel slightly better, but this only made him feel more guilty for what he was planning.

The group fell into silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts, but Harry was sure that they, like him, were thinking about the following morning, when Dumbledore’s body would be laid to rest. He had attended Neville’s grandfather’s funeral, Harry’s grandfather Lyle’s funeral, Nymphadora’s paternal grandmother’s, and then a year ago he had been to Sirius’, and while each had been sad, there was something heart wrenchingly different about this one. Perhaps it was that he was killed by someone who betrayed him, or that there would be more people than the four other funeral’s combined, but Harry felt as though he did not know what to expect and was a little worried about what he might see, about how he would feel. He wondered whether Dumbledore’s death would be more real to him once it was over. Though he had moments when the horrible fact of it threatened to overwhelm him, there were blank stretches of numbness where, despite the fact that nobody was talking about anything else in the whole castle, he still found it difficult to believe that Dumbledore had really gone. Admittedly he had not, as he had with Sirius, looked desperately for some kind of loophole, some way that Dumbledore would come back…

He felt in his pocket for the cold chain of the fake Horcrux, which he now carried with him everywhere, not as a talisman, but as a reminder of what it had cost and what remained still to do.

Harry rose early to pack the next day; Remus would be taking the three siblings home an hour after the funeral. Downstairs, he found the mood in the Great Hall subdued. Everybody was wearing their dress robes and no one seemed very hungry. Professor McGonagall had left the thronelike chair in the middle of the staff table empty. Hagrid’s chair was deserted too; Harry thought that perhaps he had not been able to face breakfast, but Snape’s place had been unceremoniously filled by Rufus Scrimgeour. Harry avoided his yellowish eyes as they scanned the Hall; Harry had the uncomfortable feeling that Scrimgeour was looking for him.

Among Scrimgeour’s entourage Harry spotted the red hair and horn-rimmed glasses of Percy Weasley, from what Harry had gathered at Christmas the Weasley’s had still not seen their middle child since the beginning of summer nineteen-ninety-five. Ron and Ginny seemed to gave no sign that they were aware of Percy, apart from stabbing pieces of kipper with unwonted venom.

Over at the other end of the Slytherin table Goyle and Blaise were muttering together with Pansy and Crabbe. Bullies though they were, they looked oddly lonely without the tall, pale figure of Malfoy between them, bossing them around. Who had been really devastated by Malfoy’s part in Dumbledore’s death were Daphne and Millicent, who while they hadn’t been close to Malfoy in about a year, had in the past been very close to him and what he had done had seemed to really upset them and Harry spotted tears rolling down both girls cheeks. Harry had not spared Malfoy much thought. His animosity was all for Snape, but he had not forgotten the fear in Malfoy’s voice on that tower top, the terrible curse he had been given, that his actions were under fear of death of both himself and his family, nor the fact that he had lowered his wand before the other Death Eaters arrived. Harry did not believe that Malfoy would have killed Dumbledore. He despised Malfoy still for his infatuation with the Dark Arts, but now the tiniest drop of pity mingled with his dislike. Where, Harry wondered, was Malfoy now, and what was Voldemort making him do under threat of killing him and his parents?

Harry’s thoughts were interrupted by a nudge in the ribs from Tracey who alongside her formal black robes she now also carried a small emerald purse. Professor McGonagall had risen to her feet, and the mournful hum in the Hall died away at once.

‘It is nearly time,’ she said. ‘Please follow your Heads of Houses out into the grounds. Gryffindors, after me.’