Chapter Text
Regulus Arcturus Black stood in front of the stone basin, frowning as he peered down at the dull green potion within. The dim lumos from his wand cast warped shadows across his face. The cavern walls surrounding him were tall and arched, damp with condensation. Kreacher stood close at his back on a small outcropping of land, an unnaturally still, dark lake stretching away from them on all sides.
“Tell me again, Kreacher,” Regulus said, not taking his eyes off the basin, “what exactly did the Dark Lord expect of you?”
Kreacher’s voice was low and rough, his throat still damaged from drinking the potion earlier that night.
“The locket must rest at the bottom of the basin. The bottom of the basin is where the locket will be safe. He said then that I must drink—” Kreacher swallowed several times, grimacing each time, then continued. “The Dark Lord is saying that Kreacher’s pain means nothing. It is my honor to keep his soul safe.”
Regulus’s frown deepened. “His soul? He said that… you were keeping his soul safe?”
“Yes, Master Regulus.”
Regulus took a step back and ran a hand through his hair. An icy clarity washed over him as he looked around the enormous cave until his eyes settled on his abused house-elf. The Dark Lord had been whispering grand ideals of a perfect society in his ear since he was a boy, but now he was finally beginning to understand what a farce it all was. There would be no reward for those loyal to this dark wizard. They were all just pawns to ensure his own total power. Expendable when their suffering raised him high enough. Easy enough to knock off the board to secure his own immortality.
“Kreacher, I have a different task for you.” He kneeled to where the house-elf stood, still shaking and pale, ears twitching as he looked up at his master.
“I’ll be retrieving the item that the Dark Lord had you hide here. After I do so, I will need you to take it away from here and destroy it.”
“Master, you mustn’t!” Kreacher was wringing his hands together now, slowly shaking his head.
“I will not argue with you about this, Kreacher. You will leave this place once I have removed the locket, you will take it to the surface, and you will kill it. It is very important that you ensure it’s destroyed. Do you understand?”
“Master…”
“I need you to tell me you understand.”
“Yes, Master Regulus. I understand. I am honored to serve the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.”
Regulus nodded once at the elf, then rose and walked toward the basin. Kreacher followed, a small, supportive hand landing on his forearm.
“Find my brother when this is done. And be good to him.”
Kreacher was silent.
“You know he was never the disappointment our mother insisted he was, don’t you?” Regulus rested his fingers along the edge of the basin.
“Master Sirius does not respect or honor his most precious blood.”
“No matter.” His throat tightened. “He’ll need you, I think.”
Regulus took a steadying breath and picked up the ladle that rested along the side of the basin. The potion inside looked shadowy and wrong. He dipped the ladle in, then raised it to his lips. As he did, the air pressure dropped inside the cave. Kreacher’s ears perked, and he spun from Regulus, looking out across the water. The dark lake rippled.
The walls of the cave shook suddenly and violently with a great, deafening boom. Regulus turned and stepped forward to search for the source of the disturbance, his eyes landing on at the edge of the small island. Beside him, Kreacher stood up straighter, his hand clutching his arm.
There was a crack of apparition, and then a witch stepped away from the bank, toward Regulus and Kreacher. She had her hands raised in front of her, her wand holstered to her chest.
“Stop!” she cried, moving toward them. Kreacher darted in front of Regulus, ready to defend him. She pulled back, her eyes tracking Kreacher’s movements.
Regulus tried to place her, but she didn’t look like any witch he knew. She was young, like him, with a mass of thick, dark curls tumbling down her back. He was certain he would have remembered seeing her among the Dark Lord’s followers.
He leveled his wand at her. “Has the Dark Lord sent you?”
“No! Absolutely not!”
“Master… Kreacher does not trust this witch. She interferes with what you are trying to do. She could be sent to murder you… Kreacher can handle her, sir.”
He studied her for a long moment. Her hands trembled. She did not look as though she was there to stop him. She looked… hungry. There was a desperation in her face that gave him pause.
Regulus gently pulled back on the elf’s shoulder. “Wait, Kreacher. I want to hear her out.”
Kreacher grumbled, but obeyed, taking a half step closer to him.
“I know why you’re in this cave, Regulus.” He frowned at her use of his name. “I know you’re here to steal something of great importance to Voldemort.”
Regulus winced at the sound of the Dark Lord’s name. “If you know what it is that I seek to destroy, surely you understand that I cannot stop until it’s done.” He kept his wand trained on her.
“Please, listen to me—if you insist on going forward with this, you must know that it will kill you.”
“Then I will die knowing that I’ve finally done the right thing.”
“But it doesn’t have to be this way.” Her hands remained up in surrender. “Come with me—I can take you to the others. We can—”
“Others?” His wand wavered.
“Yes, Regulus. There are others. And I know where they are. And I need your help to get them. We can work together to stop this war before it ruins even more lives!” She let her hands drop. “You don’t have to die tonight.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Hermione Granger. I’m a friend of your brother’s.”
“You know Sirius?” Regulus narrowed his eyes at her. “So you’re part of Dumbledore’s group?”
“Not… exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll tell you everything, just—can you lower your wand, please?”
After a moment of hesitation, he slowly let his wand arm fall to his side. Kreacher remained stiff and alert beside him. Her shoulders relaxed at the same time, and he motioned for her to continue.
By the time she was done telling them her story, Regulus had sat down on the slick rocks beside the basin. Kreacher still stood next to him, but no longer seemed ready to attack the girl, Hermione.
“The Dark Lord attacked Hogwarts? With children inside?”
Memories of Hogwarts feeling like one of the only safe places of his childhood rose inside him. His throat ached at the thought of the young witches and wizards within its walls fighting for their lives.
“Yes, he did. At the end, their blood status didn’t even matter. He gave all of the students an ultimatum. Join him, or prepare to suffer with the filth.”
“I see.” He didn’t see. Voldemort was many things, but Regulus couldn’t imagine him targeting the entire next generation of magical blood on some sort of campaign against one boy from a prophecy.
“My friend, Har—” Her voice caught, and Regulus watched her throat bob as she swallowed. “He fell against him. We were so close… one of Voldemort’s own even turned against him at the end.”
She was sitting on her knees, having lowered herself there after Regulus sat. She had not moved closer though, her eyes still cautiously flicking to Kreacher every few minutes. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then let out a small breath.
“Your cousin. Narcissa. She was so concerned for her son’s safety that she lied to Voldemort to try and give Harry a chance to regain his strength after getting hit with a curse. She told him he was dead, but—”
Regulus’s stomach dropped as he thought about his sweet, gentle cousin on a battlefield.
“He saw right through it.” Hermione’s hands clenched into fists from where they rested on her thighs. “Cast the killing curse on her right there. Then, he cast an incarcerous on Harry before he had the chance to get back up…and, remember when I told you the prophecy was pretty clear that they couldn’t use their wands against each other?”
“Yes,” Regulus answered softly.
“He just walked up to him then, and slit his throat in front of everyone.”
Kreacher snorted then, the sound quick and derisive. Hermione and Regulus turned to him.
“Master, I do not believe the Dark Lord would stoop so low as to use muggle means to end a life. We should be very careful in trusting the word of a mudblood.”
Regulus swiftly looked back to the witch and watched as her expression hardened.
“It didn’t bother me when you called me that in my own time, and I refuse to let it bother me now.”
Regulus took a long moment to study her then. There was nothing about her that would make him think she was muggleborn. She had a heavy, thick traveling robe and didn’t look dirty or conniving. She was thin, but if she had been living in safe houses for months, that would make sense.
“Kreacher,” he said, placing a gentle hand on the elf’s small shoulder, “you will refrain from using that term toward Hermione. I believe there is quite a bit we can learn from her, and it wouldn’t serve us to be disrespectful.”
Kreacher said nothing, only narrowed his eyes toward Hermione, who narrowed hers back.
“Thank you, Regulus. Now, would you like to hear about the other horcruxes?”
He nodded once, and she went on to tell him that the Dark Lord had created one out of his journal and each of the Hogwarts founders’ items.
If he had been horrified in thinking that Voldemort had split a part of his soul once in order to hide it in this cave to ensure his immortality, it paled in comparison to how he felt as Hermione explained how he had committed the same atrocious act four other times. Even Kreacher began to look concerned when she told them how he had tricked Hepzibah Smith, a well known pureblood, then murdered her.
“So, you say that they are almost impossible to destroy. What is your plan to get rid of them?”
“Right. From what we learned, horcruxes could only be destroyed with basilisk venom or fiendfyre. Acquiring the venom we would need would be incredibly challenging, but, if we can collect them, gather them together all in one place and cast fiendfyre—we can destroy them all at once. If we handle them carefully, we won’t risk him discovering that they’ve been moved or taken. I only need to find a secure location to cast… someplace where it can’t hurt anyone.”
Regulus nodded, then looked around the cave, eyes landing on the basin. “Well,” he started, meeting her eyes. “A cave is as good a place as any to burn.”
She returned his smile, and he got the feeling that she had been hoping he would say that.
“Kreacher.”
“Master Regulus?”
“Take us all back to Grimmauld.”
Kreacher extended his hands at the same time, and the three of them disapparated with a crack.
Later that evening, Regulus lay in his bed, staring up.
Kreacher had prepared a room for Hermione and they had decided that they would start planning the details of their hunt for the horcruxes in the morning over tea.
His eyes were heavy as they followed the constellations that were charmed to move across his ceiling. They had been there since he was nine years old, when Sirius had performed spell before he left for Hogwarts. Regulus had been so scared that night… irrationally afraid that if Sirius left home, he would never return.
In some ways, he never really did.
Hermione knew his brother. If she had not arrived and stopped him from trying to retrieve the locket, he would have died, and his brother would have gone on living, one day meeting this witch who was willing to apparate across decades into a death trap for a chance to make the world a better place. The corner of his mouth twitched up into a small smile. Hermione and Sirius would have gotten along well. She was probably a Gryffindor too.
He wondered if his brother would have mourned him. Or if he would have been relieved that a follower of Voldemort was dead.
He was asleep before he had the chance to convince himself one way or the other.