This is my first ever FF. I've posted it on another site before but am adding it here now. Please read and review, I always appreciate feedback, both good and bad.

He had just done something he was already regretting only fifteen minutes after doing it, at the same time mentally kicking is own ass. Harry Potter was walking away from the funeral of his long time mentor Albus Dumbledore after telling his girlfriend Ginny that he couldn't be with her anymore so Voldemort wouldn't try to use her against him. Dumbledore had been the fifth person to die to because of him and third in the last three years and he was not going to allow Ginny to become the sixth one. Of course she tried telling him that she didn't care what Voldemort did and all she wanted was to be with him, but he couldn't allow himself to give in to her. He couldn't let that happen, he wouldn't let her get hurt because they were together, he would never be able to forgive himself for it. Shortly after he walked away Rufus Scrimgeour, the minister of magic, had walked up to him in an attempt to try to get Harry to tell him what he and Dumbledore had been up to the night Dumbledore was killed. But Harry had refused to tell him anything, what he and Dumbledore did was none of the minister's business. This caused the minister to walk away with a scowl. Harry continued to walk along the lake alone, his mind still focused on Ginny and what he had just done to her.

'She may have taken it well when I told her, but now she's probably fuming about it and cursing my name now that I'm not there anymore' Harry thought to himself. 'I just hope that eventually I'll be able to end this and she'll forgive me.'

He hated Voldemort more than ever right now. He wanted nothing more than to find him and charge him down right where he stood, even if he knew he would die from it, at least he'd be able to let all his steam out of his body that was fighting to be released. But at the moment he had no idea where Voldemort was, so all he could do was continue walking along the lake and hate him. He turned up towards the trees and stopped right next to one and just stared at it, not really seeing it at all. Then he couldn't hold it in anymore. He started screaming inside his mind and punched the tree again and again as fast as he could, letting out all his anger that was pounding against him.

"I will find you Voldemort, I will destroy the rest of your horcruxes and rid the world of you, you bloody bastard" Harry said out loud to himself. "I don't care if I go down with you, you have taken so much from me and you will eventually pay for every last thing you have done. Not only the things you've done to me, but the thousands of others that you have hurt and murdered. My mum, my dad, Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore, and the thousands of other innocent people that are dead because of you. And not one of your precious Death Eaters will be spared. I'll hunt them down and kill them all one at a time if I have to."

"And how exactly do you plan on doing that Harry?" a voicefrom behind him said.

Harry came back to reality. He wasn't aware that he was talking out loud or that anyone had walked up behind him. He turned around to see Ron and Hermione standing a few feet from him, looking right at him, Hermione with a shocked look on her face.

"Harry, you need to be careful about this, you can't do anything careless," Hermione said in a worried voice. "We don't want you to get hurt."

"You don't want me to get HURT! Hermione, I don't give a damn if I get hurt anymore, I don't care if I DIE anymore. All I care about now is ridding the whole bloody world of that bastard," said Harry.

"Harry," Hermione shrieked.

"Don't start Hermione, that's exactly what he is and I'm going to make sure he bloody well pays," said Harry sounding like he didn't care if he was cursing right in front of a toddler.

"So what are you planning to do?" asked Ron.

"The first thing I need to do is complete the job I started doing with Dumbledore, find the rest of the horcruxes and destroy them," said Harry. "Once I do that then I'll take care of Voldemort himself."

"But what about our last year at Hogwarts?" asked Hermione.

"It's not important to me anymore, all that matters to me now is ridding the world of Voldemort," said Harry.

To his surprise Hermione smiled.

"I had a feeling you'd say something that, you're just too predictable Harry."

Harry let himself laugh a little bit at what Hermione had said.

"I sure hope I'm not, or else it'll be too easy for Voldemort to kill me when we face each other for the last time," Harry said smiling back at her. "But then again it can't be true, because if it was then he'd have been able to kill me a long time ago wouldn't he," he said still smiling.

"We're coming with you to find the rest of the horcruxes, and don't you even think that we're letting you do this alone, that would be suicide and you know it," said Ron.

Harry was about to start arguing for a second but he knew Ron was right. He'd known all along that they would say this eventually and there was no getting out of it.

"I guess I might as well just agree because I know I'm going to be overruled if I try to protest aren't I?" said Harry with a grin to his friend.

Ron and Hermione both nodded their heads without saying a word.

"Even if you didn't let us come with you we were going to follow you anyway, but this way makes it a lot easier with a lot less sparks flying," said Hermione.

Harry let another little laugh out as he thought about how lucky he was to have two such great and loyal friends who were willing to do almost anything for him.

"So what are we going to do about this situation, because it's a pretty big one and Hermione is right, we can't do anything careless," said Ron.

Harry suddenly realized he hadn't thought the whole situation through yet.

"Well I actually hadn't gone through the whole plan yet, there's been so much other stuff on my mind lately it's been hard to think about everything that needs to be done," said Harry.

Harry turned away and started to pace back and forth, thinking really hard about what they should do. After a few minutes of pacing and careful thinking he turned back to them and took up a serious tone.

"Okay, we're not going to be able to go anywhere until after my birthday so that we'll all be of age. You two already are but we'll have to wait until I am too, and so I can pass my apparation test because I'll definitely need to be able to do that. In the meantime while we wait we should try to keep doing research like I was doing with Dumbledore to see if we can find any kind of clues to where the rest of the horcruxes may be. Things like places Voldemort may have been fond with in the past that he may have hid them, or other objects that may be horcruxes if we're wrong about any of our theories right now, and I think that maybe we should all apply to join the Order. If we're part of the Order then we could always have a better way to know where Voldemort is and what he's planning at all times, even though we'll be using the majority of our time working on the horcruxes. And I also believe it would be best if nobody but the three of us knew about the horcruxes and that we're going to be going out after them. I don't want to take a single chance of anyone finding out about what we're up to, not even Ginny. It's not that I don't trust her and the Order, but if nobody knows about it but us, then the chance of Voldemort or his Death Eaters somehow finding out what we're up to is close to absolute zero."

Ron and Hermione looked at each other and had a silent 10 second thinking session with each other, then turned back and nodded in agreement.

"I'm going to go back to the Dursley's one more time, but I won't be staying long. I'll probably be there a week at the very most. I'm only going to go back this last time because I know it's what Dumbledore would have wanted me to. Then we can all lie low at the Burrow while I wait to turn 17 and take my apparation test, then after that we start looking for the horcruxes."

Ron and Hermione looked at each other for a moment without saying anything, as if they were telepathically agreeing with what Harry was saying.

"Sounds good to me," said Ron looking back at Harry.

"Me too," Hermione agreed.

Wanting to be alone for a little while longer to think about other things Harry asked Ron and Hermione to leave for a minute, but told them he'd be back shortly.

"You go on Hermione, I need to talk to Harry about something else real quick," said Ron. Hermione nodded her head and walked back towards the castle, leaving them alone. "Now I can ask you this myself Harry, what did you do to my sister?" he asked, and Harry could hear a little anger in his voice. "I saw her running up to the castle crying after you walked away from her and that's a sign that you did something to her."

Harry let his face sink back into the ground as his mind wandered back to Ginny and what he had done a little more than a half hour ago. "I told her we can't be together," said Harry. "If Voldemort learns that we're together he'll use her to get to me, and I'd never be able to live with myself because of that."

"So you thought breaking her heart would make it all better?" asked Ron. "Doing what you did to her is only going to tear her up even more and probably make her want to die anyway. Do you think she waited for you to fall for her for almost five years so she could lose you after only a few weeks?"

Harry was now staring at Ron with disbelief. This couldn't be the same Ron that he knew was supposed to be super overprotective of his little sister. This had to be an imposter that had drank some polyjuice potion.

"Since when do you approve of me and Ginny being together?" asked Harry, looking at Ron as if he'd just sprouted an extra set of ears.

"Hey now, of course I still look out for my sister, but I'm not as thick as Hermione tells me I am almost every day. I can see that you two love each other and it doesn't matter what I think anymore because Hermione's right, she's a big girl now and I need to let her make her own decisions and stop trying to pry my way into her life."

Harry was shocked at what he was hearing. Never did he think he'd live to see the day where Ron would admit that he needed to stay out of his baby sister's life and let her do what she wanted. Looking back at the ground he let his face sink back into it.

"I'm sorry, but I just can't, I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to her," said Harry.

Ron just shook his head and frowned.

"I'm just going to leave now and pray that someday you'll realize that nobody is safe anymore and she's going to be in danger whether you're with her or not," said Ron turning away.

As Ron turned to walk back towards the castle Harry sat down by the tree and put his head in his hands. Had he done the right thing? Would Ginny be safer if he stayed away from her? After all Snape and Malfoy had known they were together so maybe Voldemort already learned about them being together through one of them. Maybe he just didn't know what was right anymore. Maybe he'd never know the right thing to do in a relationship and he'd just be alone and single his life. But he wouldn't let that get to him now, he wouldn't allow himself to think about anything that might put Ginny's life in more danger than it already was. Deciding that he'd better get back to the castle himself before it started to get dark he got up and started walking back. But before he could even take 10 steps back down the lake someone in the trees called out to him.

"Do you really think you're ready to take on the Dark Lord?"

Harry turned around quickly pulling out his wand to see who had spoken to him. Someone was standing underneath the trees looking right at him but he couldn't see who it was, the shadows completely covered him from the knees up.

Hope you enjoyed this first chapter. Reviews are always welcome and appreciated.