Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter

Chapter 14

Knowing that Kreacher found the locket in a cave essentially confirmed that Regulus was the R.A.B. we were looking for. Everything fit too well together for this to be a coincidence.

"A cave?" Neville asked. "Like the one you went to?"

"Kreacher, do you know anything about the cave that Master Regulus got the locket from?" I asked the house elf.

Kreacher shifted around uncomfortably and looked at us all as if he was wondering if he could trust us with this information. Unfortunately for him, he didn't really have the choice to withhold the information from Harry and me. He then began to mumble something too quietly for us to hear.

"Would you please speak up, Kreacher?" I asked.

"Kreacher has been in the cave twice," he told us quickly. "Once with the Dark Lord and once with Master Regulus."

That stunned all of us into silence. None of us had any idea that Kreacher had been involved with Voldemort at any point in his life. Honestly, this shouldn't have shocked us that much considering the fact that many of his former masters were involved with them during their own lives. However, we hadn't considered the possibility of them involving their house elf with Voldemort's work.

"Why were you made to go to the cave those two times?" Harry asked.

"The Dark Lord requested a house elf from his followers and Kreacher was volunteered," Kreacher said without needing any coaxing. "Kreacher was brought to the cave and went on a boat with the Dark Lord and then made Kreacher drink this horrible potion. The Dark Lord put a locket in the bowl and put more of the horrible potion in it and left without Kreacher."

As he spoke, I remembered clearly our final night with Dumbledore and the potion that he told us that he had to drink. The state he had been in after drinking only part of it was horrifying enough and it was very difficult to imagine Kreacher being in this same fragile state with only Voldemort being there. At this point, the house elf was sobbing as he remembered being left behind in that cave in the sea.

"What happened after that?" I asked him when his tears began to slow down. "Why did you go back with Master Regulus?"

"Master Regulus wanted to go there when Kreacher told him what happened," he explained. "Master said that he wanted to go the cave in the sea with all of the terrible creatures in the water."

"What creatures?" Ron asked.

"There were Inferi in the lake that was in the cave," I explained. "They were only awoken when someone touched the water."

Ron, Hermione, and Neville all looked horrified at the thought of what I had said. Harry and I exchanged looks when we remembered that we hadn't told them about that detail of that night. However, we quickly turned back to Kreacher and ignored the others for the sake of figuring out what had happened to the locket.

"Why did Master Regulus go to the cave?" Harry asked. "What was his purpose?"

"Master Regulus wanted to get the locket that the Dark Lord put there," Kreacher said. "He brought Kreacher to the potion and…and…"

"He made you drink it again?" I asked.

Kreacher shook his head frantically and started crying again. I didn't understand what was the matter until Neville spoke up behind me.

"He had to make Regulus drink it," Neville said.

With that, Kreacher began to cry more, but that didn't stop him from telling the rest of the story without us having to ask him the questions.

"Master Regulus made Kreacher switch the locket for the one that he brought," he cried. "Master Regulus was too weak to get out of the cave, but he ordered Kreacher to destroy the locket and to leave him there and not tell the Mistress what happened there. Kreacher saw the creatures take Master Regulus into the lake…"

When Kreacher began to sob heavily, we decided that we may have pushed it too far with him. We did need the information, but we didn't plan on making him so upset about it. Hermione looked like she wanted to comfort him, but with a look from Ron made her stop. While it would have been well intended, we all doubted that Kreacher would take too kindly to Hermione stepping too close to him.

"Thank you, Kreacher," I said. "I'm sorry that we've upset you…"

Kreacher didn't respond to me, but his crying seemed to slow down just a small bit as he hid his face behind his hands. Harry looked like he wanted to continue to question him, but was hesitant with him in this state. We couldn't treat him as badly as Sirius had when he was his master. I didn't like the idea of having claim over him, but I refused to disregard him as a person no matter how he had been treated in the past. All of us allowed him to have a moment to himself while he calmed down before we spoke up again.

"Kreacher?" I asked gently. "Do you think you could do something for us – we want to help you with what Master Regulus asked you to do."

He looked at both of us curiously, but remained silent. For a moment, I wondered if he thought that we were trying to trick him.

"Would you help us get the locket back from Mundungus Flecher?" Harry asked.

"Kreacher would like that very much," he nodded.

Just for a split second, I thought that I saw Kreacher smile for the first time since I had ever met him. It didn't last long, but I realized that we must have done something right.

"Would you go find Mundungus Flecher and bring him here?" I asked.

Without hesitation, the house-elf nodded and Apparated out of the room to fulfill our request. We were all left standing around where he had once been without being able to say anything for a minute or so before we dispersed.

After that, we were left waiting in the house for Kreacher's return.

Staying in the house was enough to drive us all mad after only a few days being there. Every moment had me understanding Sirius and his hatred of isolation on an entirely different level. Even with some of my closest friends near me didn't settle this feeling inside of me that made me feel restless. We certainly couldn't leave the house now because of the appearance of two individuals who repeatedly walked around the house as if they were waiting for one of us to jump out and announce that we were there. In a way, these dark-clothed men walking around the house was a comfort. They were obviously on the look out for us for Voldemort, but knowing that they were there and not in hiding brought a strange sense of relaxation to us.

During this time in the house, I began to examine the pendant that Dumbledore had given me more closely than I had before. Honestly, I only vaguely understood the purpose of it and didn't fully understand how it was supposed to help us out. Over the past few days, I noticed that the flowing liquid in the center of the pendant had slowly started to slow its speed. As I recalled, the minister had told me that the liquid would become frozen when you weren't taking the "right path toward your destiny." Whatever that meant.

"You would think this thing would at least lead us toward the Horcruxes," I said as I took the necklace off of my neck and began to twirl it around and look at it.

"That would make things too easy, wouldn't it?" Ron muttered as he clicked on his Deluminator.

Hermione watched Ron as the lights turned on and off again and looked like she was quickly losing her patience with the lights constantly flickering. Neville was lying on the ground and looking at the ceiling as if it held all the answers in the world. Honestly, he was probably bored out of his mind and questioning why he had volunteered to come along with us, but I preferred to believe that he was just deep in thought. Harry, on the other hand, continued looking out of the window at the men that had returned to the other end of the street.

"Staring at them isn't going to make them go away," I said as laid back in the chair I was sitting in and clutched the pendant in my hand.

"Tell me something productive I could be doing instead and I'll be happy to stop watching them," Harry muttered.

I went back to looking at the liquid-like substance in the pendant again and started to question whether or not I was just imagining that it had slowed down. Maybe I was just looking at it too much. If we were on the wrong track, the inside of the locket definitely have frozen – not just slowed down. I continued looking at it as the lights flickered on and off for another few minutes.

"Would you stop that?" Hermione shouted suddenly.

Ron jumped at the sound of her voice next to him and quickly closed the Deluminator without saying anything in his own defense. After another few minutes of silence, Neville decided to stop staring at the wall and walk around the house once more. We had all done that so many times since our arrival, but I was all we could do from driving ourselves insane while we waited for Kreacher and Mundungus Flecher.

Soon after he left, Harry went upstairs – probably to look around in Sirius' room for the fiftieth time – and Hermione soon followed afterwards. Ron stayed seated across the room from me, but continued to look at his Deluminator as if it was the first time that he had ever looked at the strange object.

Remaining quiet left me alone to my thoughts, which was something that I'd found to be quite dangerous in the past.

Thinking about how things were going here made me physically ill. It isn't like Harry and I thought that this was going to be a simple task that would take no time to do, but I never expected things to start so suddenly. One day we were at a wedding with all of the people we loved and we had been ripped away so quickly without being able to say anything on departure. There was no way to be certain that they were holding up well and I just thought about how we could die without ever knowing what's happened to them.

The Weasleys had kept us safe and comfortable for so many years and there was no way we could repay them for what they had done. For all we knew, the Death Eaters could be watching them as closely as they were watching us or they could have already been attacked. We couldn't contact them without giving ourselves away and endangering everyone around us. Flashes of the chaos that ensued the last time we saw them went through my mind and I started to wonder if it was going to be the last time I saw them. And what about the Dursleys? I know that we were never on the best of terms, but that didn't stop me from wondering what would become of them. If things were as bad as we thought they were, then there was no way that the Muggles were going to be unaffected. No matter how much trouble Dudley had given Harry and me growing up, I knew that he didn't deserve to live in fear of what our world could bring to him.

And what about Hermione and Neville's family? What would become of them if Voldemort and his people found out that they were helping us look for his Horcruxes? Even the idea that they were associated with us puts them in extreme danger. Considering the horrible precaution that Hermione had taken with erasing her parents' memories of her, I had more hope that her parents would remain relatively safe and out of reach from the Death Eaters. On the other hand, I had my own worries about Neville's family. They could still use his parents against him if they knew that he was involved. Gran was a tough woman, and I felt like she was more prepared than I gave her credit for. But she still was an old woman and I feared what they would do to her if they found her.

Every moment we delayed in finding the Horcruxes only endangered our friends and family more.

"You've been awfully quiet," Ron said suddenly.

Coming out of my thoughts, I realized that the two of us had been sitting in the room in silence for a while. It occurred to me then how rarely that the two of us were unaccompanied by our other friends and how infrequently we had our own conversations.

"Just thinking," I sighed.

He nodded slowly, but didn't take his eyes off of me. I knew the look on his face because it was the same one he had when he came over to check on me after we had seen into Voldemort's head on the first night of our stay at Grimmauld Place. Ron had never been one to be very subtle about his face expressions.

"What is it?" I asked as I looked down at my hands.

"They'll be okay, you know?" he said slowly. "The others – they're more prepared for this than we ever will be."

"That doesn't make them much safer," I said. "It's because of us that they're all in danger."

"Where do you get that it's our fault that You-Know-Who is psychotic?" he said with disbelief. "It's no fault of ours that he's power hungry and determined to kill a group of teenagers."

"That doesn't make this any easier," I said. "He'll stop at nothing to kill Harry and me – that puts everyone we know in danger because of some stupid prophecy that says that we have to off one the other in order to survive."

For a moment, Ron didn't respond and simply flipped the Deluminator around in his hands slowly as he thought of what to say. When he finally looked back up at me, he had a small ghost of a smile on his face.

"We're going to get everyone out of this," he said. "Dumbledore wouldn't have given you two this mission if he didn't think you could do it."

"He also told us that he was going to help us find the Horcruxes," I said hopelessly. "But he was killed before he could even hint where we could have found something – we have nothing to go off of."

"He showed you You-Know-Who's past, didn't he?" Ron said. "Horcruxes are made from things that are important to the owner, isn't that what Dumbledore told you? Knowing what he was like before all of this could help us find what he turned into a Horcrux."

"I guess," I sighed. "But where do we start? It's been months since Dumbledore died and the only thing that we've found is that Mundungus Flecher stole a locket that might not even be the actual Horcrux."

"It's better than nothing," Ron said. "It's just going to take time to figure everything out. It's not like You-Know-Who was going to make it easy to kill him."

"I knew it wasn't going to be easy," I told him. "But it's a little frightening actually having to do it now."

Ron opened his mouth to say something else, but was stopped when a noise came from the front of the house. The unmistakable sound of the door opening made every part of my body freeze in shock. When Mad-Eye Moody's chilling voice came from the hall, I knew that the door opening was not my imagination.

"Severus Snape?" Moody called.

I slowly became unhinged and crept over toward where Ron sat next to the door to the hall and peered out alongside my friend. The dust in the hall began to move toward the end of the hall and out of our sight as it formed into the horrifying creature that had appeared on our arrival.

"I am not Severus Snape," I voice said from where the door stood. "And I did not kill you, Albus."

The dust at the end of the hall made an audible drop and everything went quiet as soon as the person from the door spoke. But something seemed oddly familiar about the person who spoke, but I couldn't quite put a name to who it could be.

Ron and I slowly reached into our coat pocket and pulled out our wands as we stood against the wall and prepared for an attack. We stood there for a moment before we heard a loud crash coming from the hall and a shout.

"Hold your fire!" the man from the hall shouted, now sounding as though he was coming from the ground.

"Lupin?" Harry's voice came from the stairs.

Ron and I looked at each other quickly and moved toward the door and out into the hall at once. Sure enough, Remus Lupin was standing up from the ground, most likely dodging the curse that Harry had just sent his way. Hermione and Neville appeared from behind where Harry was standing midway down the stairs with all of their wands still pointed at Lupin. Ron and I raised our wands toward him as approached him.

"How do we know it's you?" I asked, my eyes flickering at Harry, who was standing just as ready to attack as I was.

"Fair enough," Lupin nodded. "My name is Remus John Lupin, a werewolf. I taught Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts and I taught the two of you how to produce a Patronus."

As he spoke, he gestured toward Harry and me, but we still didn't let our guard down.

"We're going to need more than that," Harry demanded.

"Okay," Lupin continued. "Harry, your Patronus takes the form of a stag – much like your father's did – and Emily, your Patronus takes the form of a Phoenix. I guess I could also mention that I helped to create the secret Marauder's Map under the name Moony."

With that, we all looked at each other and decided that it was enough information to believe that it was the real Remus Lupin.

"We just had to make sure," Harry said as he lowered his wand.

"I'm glad that you did," Lupin nodded as we all followed Harry's lead in lowering our wands and allowing him to walk freely.

"How did you know that we were here?" I asked.

"I didn't know you'd be here," Lupin said. "I'd come here for my own hiding – I've been chased by a Death Eater for days. How long have you all been here?"

"We came here not long after the wedding," Hermione said. "But we first went to Tottenham Court Road and we were found not long after."

"You were found there?" he asked in surprise.

"In a coffee shop, yes," I told him.

"That's odd," Lupin said. "I wouldn't think that they would have people looking around that area."

The others began to walk down the steps and we all gradually began to move into the sitting room that was just down the hall. We all began to settle down before we began to interrogate Lupin for the information that we had been deprived of.

"So what is going on out there?" Ron asked, not seeming to want to wait any longer for the answers.

"Well, after you all left the wedding, Death Eaters were all over the place," Lupin said. "They completely tore the Burrow apart looking for the two of you, but they found nothing."

"How did they even get into the area?" I asked. "I thought that there were protective spells all over the place."

"They held them off for a moment, but not for long," Lupin explained. "The Death Eaters have taken over the Ministry, so there's nothing that's in the way of them now. There number one priority is finding both of you – which is why it's important that you keep yourself hidden for as long as possible."

Lupin stopped talking for a moment while he pulled out a newspaper from the inside of his coat pocket. On the front, two large pictures of our faces were in print with the words WANTED FOR QUESTIONING ABOUT THE DEATH OF ALBUS DUMBLEDORE written above us.

"They're trying to blame Dumbledore's death on Harry and Emily?" Neville asked in horror.

"It's how they're going to get everyone on their side," I said quietly. "It's not the first time that they've used the Daily Prophet to turn everyone against us."

"But what about Snape?" Ron demanded. "People know that Snape was the one that did it!"

"Of course that people know that Snape was the one who did it," Lupin said. "But people don't dare try to speak like that with the way things are. Scrimgeour was killed trying to conceal the location of the two of you and there's no doubt at all that the current minister is under the Imperius Curse. There are Death Eaters all over the Ministry – people are too afraid to talk. The only hope that people had was that the Potters would step up as The Chosen Ones now that Dumbledore is dead, but placing that doubt in some of their heads that you two may have been involved in his murder is enough to terrify people who aren't certain of the truth."

Voldemort was taking a turn that I should have expected him to take as soon as Dumbledore was dead. If he was going to try to kill us, he was going to have to turn the whole world against us so that he'd have a better chance. Our advantage from the start was that people had looked at us as a beacon of hope for the future, but take that away and we're just two fugitives that people want out of the picture as much as Voldemort himself.

If we thought that fining Horcruxes and defeating Voldemort was impossible before, how were things going to turn out now that people were slowly being turned against us?

Thanks for reading!