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"Alexandra..." someone was whispering softly above me, shaking my arm. "Alexandra, wake up."

I groaned and cracked my eyes open. I saw Potter's face, and for a moment I forgot where I was and what I was doing. Then I realized I was lying on a couch in the common room, and Potter must have just come back from Hagrid's. 

I suddenly sat up straight, weary but eager for news. "Did you find Slughorn?"

"On the way to Hagrid's," he nodded. "He was picking leaves off one of Professor Spout's plants, and I guess I convinced him to walk down with me."

"Of course you did," I smiled as Potter sat next to me. "He absolutely adores you, even with Dumbledore's nagging."

"And I had the Luck Potion," he added, but he looked pleased.

"Has it gone away yet?" I asked. 

"Definitely," he answered grimly. "I almost got caught by Filch on my way way up here."

"So," I urged him impatiently. "Did you get it?"

"I got it," he sighed, and proceeded to tell me the whole story. Apparently when him and Slughorn got to the grounds, Hagrid was having a funeral for Aragog.

"The man-eating spider that almost killed us in our second year?" I interrupted him in disbelief. 

"Oh yeah," Potter replied. "He dug a grave and everything."

After the funeral, which Slughorn had apparently contributed to by giving a dramatic, last minute speech at, Hagrid and Slughorn drank and sang old songs about wizards who had their wands broken in two.

"Hagrid fell asleep right at the table, and that's when I started talking to Slughorn," Potter said, getting a far away look on his face. "He told me a story about my mother. Some magic she had done for him with a lily petal."

I shuffled closer to him and snaked my arm around his torso. We sat back against the couch and he leaned into me. I nearly fell asleep again, wrapped in his warmth.

"And then?" I mumbled, fighting to stay awake.

"He gave it to me," Potter answered simply. It sounded like he was also exhausted. "I went straight to Dumbledore. The memory was the same until the end. Slughorn told Tom Riddle what a Horcrux was, how to create one, and how dangerous it was."

"What is it?" I whispered.

"Someone splits their soul by killing another person and puts a piece of it inside an object for protection. That object is a Horcrux," Potter replied. I felt his heart beating against my cheek. "Voldemort has seven," he added.

"Seven?" I exclaimed, lifting my heavy head in shock to look at his face. "But they could be anywhere and disguised as any object."

"I should say had. Dumbledore already got two," Potter corrected. "I destroyed one. That diary with the Basilisk fang in the Chamber of Secrets."

"That was a Horcrux?" I breathed.

He swallowed and nodded. "And the other was a ring that Dumbledore must have destroyed this summer. It's why his hand looked like that—all black and dead."

I tried to process everything I had just learned. 

"I know," Potter muttered, reading my face. Then he took a deep breath and said, "Dumbledore think's he's found another. And... he wants me to go with him to destroy it."

At this I sat up completely straight again, horrified. I felt a sudden stab of anger at the headmaster for bringing Potter into this. "You can't," I said. "You just can't. I know you have a knack for getting yourself into stupid, dangerous situations, but going Merlin knows where to destroy a piece of Voldemort's soul? That's bad, even for you."