Chapter 68: Sirius, Brother

Sirius rolled his eyes skyward, reviling at the tug of magic before he even uttered the command. "Kreacher!"

Kreacher appeared at his feet with a pop, clad in a neat tea towel rather than his preferred filthy loincloth. His sneer of disgust was all too familiar, however. "Kreacher is here because Master called, little though Kreacher likes it, how Kreacher's Mistress would cry if she knew—"

"Yes, Kreacher, I don't like it any better than you do!" Sirius snapped. His mother had been perfectly capable of telling him what a great disappointment he had been without Kreacher's help, but Kreacher had always been more than willing to reinforce the family narrative. Kreacher had worshipped Walburga and Orion and Regulus…

Regulus.

Best to get to the point and end this little family reunion as soon as possible.

"Kreacher, did my brother Regulus ever ask you to help him destroy a locket?"

Kreacher flung himself to the ground and pounded his head against the hard stone corner of Dumbledore's hearth.

"KREACHER, I ORDER YOU TO STOP BEING MELODRAMATIC AND ANSWER MY QUESTION!" Sirius shouted. He un-crumpled the note he still clenched in his fist and fell to his knees beside the elf. Kreacher hadn't stopped pounding his head against the hearth; apparently Kreacher and Sirius had different definitions of melodramatic. "Look at this!" Sirius grabbed Kreacher by his neck and shoved the scrap of parchment in front of his streaming eyes. "This is Regulus' handwriting. These are his initials. It was written around the time he died. It says he stole a locket knowing that he would die and that he was hoping to destroy it first. What do you know about that?"

"KREACHER WON'T!" It was the closest thing to a roar Sirius had ever heard from a house-elf. It also should have been magically impossible. Sirius had asked a direct question and it was clear to Sirius, even though his enraged haze, that Kreacher knew the answer. Kreacher shouldn't have had a choice about answering.

"I am your master and I gave you an order!" Sirius shouted back. His voice shook and he fought the urge to take his hand off of Kreacher's neck and use it to strangle the elf instead. But that was what Kreacher wanted. If Sirius let go of Kreacher, he would smash his brains out on the hearth. Kreacher would rather die than tell Sirius how to defeat Voldemort.

They were so close. They were so close to finding another Horcrux, so close to giving Harry and his friends a safer world, and they weren't going to manage it because Sirius' parents' house-elf hated Sirius as much as Sirius' parents always had.

"Sirius!" Harry appeared at Sirius' shoulder, looking anxious and worried and even a little bit frightened. "Sirius, let go of him."

"If I do, he'll do himself in," said Sirius, wondering when his godson had gotten to be so thick. "Then we'll never find out what he knows."

"Order him not to hurt himself," Remus called from the middle of the room.

"He's not listening to my orders," Sirius pointed out, lamenting that Professor Moony had also suddenly become an idiot. "If he was, he would have answered already."

"He may have found some sort of loophole in that question," Remus said, gently and detachedly as if he were teaching a class of high-strung twelve-year-olds. "Let's see whether he's still bound to obey you. Order him to be still and not hurt himself."

Sirius would have liked to have punched Remus in his condescending, holier-than-thou face, but that would have meant letting go of the elf. "Kreacher, as your master, Sirius Black, the last of the Blacks, I order you to sit still and not hurt yourself."

Kreacher froze beneath his hands.

"Maybe we could try to ask nicely?" Harry asked, inches away from Sirius and Kreacher. Something in Harry's tone told Sirius that Harry, just like Remus and Kreacher and Walburga and Orion and Regulus, thought Sirius was a useless idiot that no one could ever like.

"Fine." Sirius let go of Kreacher and stood, turing to stare at Dumbledore's bookcase so that he wouldn't have to look at Harry or Remus or any of it. "Fucking ask nicely if you must. Kreacher, I order you to answer honestly if you know the answers to Harry's questions."

"Half-blood," Kreacher croaked, and Sirius knew that tears were still streaming from the elf's overlarge eyes and dripping from his bulbous nose. "Kreacher should not have to answer questions from a half-blood."

"Kreacher will answer Harry's questions because I order him to do it!" Sirius bellowed, and the insolent silence that followed told him that the order had taken.

"Kreacher," asked Harry quietly, "Do you want a drink or something to dry your eyes?"

Sirius ground his teeth and stared at the books on the shelf in front of him. The Pocket Book of Transfiguration. The Transfiguration Anthology. The Transfiguration of Stephenson Palace. Great Minds of Transfiguration.

"Kreacher wants nothing from the boy whose mother was Mudblood filth."

Sirius read more titles. The Transfiguration Dictionary. 1000 Transfigurations to Try Before You Die. Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration. Transformation Through the Ages.

"Kreacher," said Harry, as if the elf hadn't just called Lily by one of the ugliest words in the English language, "when was the last time you saw Regulus Black before he disappeared?"

"Kreacher saw Master Regulus disappear."

Kreacher was sobbing openly again, shaking and gasping and choking.

Sirius clenched his jaw and stared harder at the bookcase. The Best of Transfiguration Today, 1980-1989. Switching Spells on the Grandest Scale. The Secret Life of Transfigured Birds.

"Did you see Master Regulus disappear under the water beside an island after drinking a basin of green potion?"

"Yes!"

The titles blurred and ran together as Sirius stared. Beyond NEWTS: Advanced Transfiguration. The Best of Transfiguration Today, 1970-1979. Automobiles and Airplanes: Transfiguration of Muggle Artifacts.

"Did Master Regulus order you not to tell anyone what he had done?"

"Yes."

"Was that why you couldn't answer Sirius' question? Because Master Regulus had already given you an order and you couldn't break your word to him?"

"Yes."

"Did Master Regulus order you to destroy the locket he stole?"

"Nothing Kreacher did made any mark upon it," moaned the elf. "Kreacher tried everything, everything he knew, but nothing, nothing would work… So many powerful spells upon the casing, Kreacher was sure the way to destroy it was to get inside it, but it would not open… Kreacher punished himself, he tried again, he punished himself, he tried again. Kreacher failed to obey orders, Kreacher could not destroy the locket! And his Mistress was mad with grief, because Master Regulus had disappeared, and Kreacher could not tell her what had happened, no, because Master Regulus had forbidden him to tell any of the family what happened in the cave…."

Kreacher began to sob so hard there were no more coherent words.

Harry paused to let Kreacher regain a modicum of control, this time wisely not offering any sort of comfort. Sirius risked moving a step to his left so he could stare at a different bookcase. Next to Dumbledore's Transfiguration section, it seemed, was his knitting section.

Cast On, Bind Off. Vogue Knitting: The Ultimate Knitting Book. Milarrochy Heids. Knitwear Design Workshop. Mastering Color Knitting: Simple Instructions for Stranded, Intarsia, and Double Knitting. Custom Socks: Knit to Fit Your Feet.

"Kreacher," asked Harry. "Do you know where the locket is now?"

"Kreacher knows."

"Would you let me help you destroy it so that you can obey Master Regulus' orders? Now that we've found out what happened without you ever breaking your word to Regulus about telling us? That sword over there, I think that will break the locket."

"Kreacher hit the locket with goblin-made silver already. Kreacher tried. The sword cannot open the locket."

"Bring me the locket. Let me see if I can open it for Regulus."

There was a pop of Apparition, and Sirius had barely turned around to face the room before Kreacher was back with a locket dangling from one hand.

Sirius could see at a glance that this was the genuine article. It was as large as a chicken's egg. An ornate letter S, inlaid with many small green stones, sparkled brightly in the morning sunshine.

Harry laid the locket on the table and took the Sword of Gryffindor in his hand. He brought the sword down on the locket, or rather, he tried to— but the locket seemed to repel the sword. "You're right, Kreacher," said Harry. "I suppose we'll have to open it."

"It doesn't open," said Kreacher. "Kreacher told you—"

Harry casually handed to sword to Sirius. "Be ready to kill it if it does something odd when I open it, will you?" he asked.

"Just how are you going to open it?" asked Sirius as he gripped the hilt of the sword.

"I opened Slytherin's secret chamber. I can open Slytherin's locket as well. You see how the S looks like a snake?"

"Harry…" began Sirius, but he had nothing more to say. He was almost certain that Harry was correct: only Parselmouth could open the locket. He nodded that he was as ready as he would ever be.

On the table, the locket rattled of its own volition. It, too, was anticipating a fight.

The word escaped Harry's lips like a hiss and a snarl. The golden doors of the locket swung wide with a little click.

Sirius leaned over the table for a closer look. Behind both of the glass windows within blinked a living eye, dark and handsome.

"Stab it!" urged Harry and Remus in unison.

Sirius raised the sword. Dumbledore had done this, and Harry, and Remus, and Severus Fucking Snape. Sirius could certainly do it.

Then a voice hissed from out of the locket.

"I have seen your heart, and it is mine."

"Stab it!" Harry and Remus urged once more. But Sirius was mesmerized by the hissing voice. It was promising him something. It knew something. He had to know what it knew.

"I have seen your dreams, Sirius Orion Black, and I have seen your fears. All you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible…"

If Harry and Remus were still calling for him, Sirius didn't hear it. He gazed down into the dark eyes. The eyes lightened and became the particular shade of gray associated with English purebloods.

No, the particular shade of gray associated with the House of Black.

Then, out of the windows blossomed the shade of a teenage boy. He looked like Sirius, but slighter and shorter with coarser features that didn't offset the natural haughtiness of his expression.

It was Regulus.

"It's no wonder that our parents loved me and not you," said the locket-Regulus. Sirius hadn't heard Regulus' voice in seventeen years. The sound of it turned his stomach and left him breathing in air that felt like Grimmauld Place. The sound of it also caused something in his shoulders to slacken with relief. "I was better than you, after all. While you were flying about on your motorcycle, laughing with James, pretending that you were so very superior, I was dying to save the world from the Dark Lord."

It was true.

"Your plans led to James and Lily's deaths. I suppose I should be grateful that you wanted him for a brother and not me, or you might have gotten me killed before I was able to capture the locket."

It was true.

"Our parents were right when they said that I was the smart one, the worthy one, the better one, weren't they? You couldn't see. You were the only one who couldn't see me, weren't you? Last year, old Sluggy told you about me. Anna's little daughter told you about me. Even Aberforth Dumbledore told you about me. They all told you that you misjudged me, but you didn't care because you only hear exactly what you want to hear."

It was true.

"Your rashness killed Lily and James. Your rashness endangered Harry. Your rashness is the only reason Harry didn't have a proper childhood, and you ought to know that at some level he despises you for it. We all despised you: Mother and Father and me, even Kreacher. Everyone hated you. That's why no one cared when you went to Azkaban. When your own family finds you revolting, what hope is there for you in the rest of the world?"

It was true.

"You were never as clever as you thought you were. You will never be of any use to anyone. Remus pities you, perhaps, but he thinks little of the man who thought it funny to cause him to bite a classmate. Harry clings to you, perhaps, because thanks to you he has no one else. Little Nymphadora looks at you with curiosity, and Andromeda with nostalgia, but they lived the best years of their lives without you."

It was true.

"You are nothing, nothing, nothing to any of them. Nothing to Tonks or to Anna. Nothing to Remus. Nothing to Harry, you can do nothing for him, he is better off without you, he wouldn't miss you if you were gone, he didn't miss you when you were gone, he won't miss you when you come with me…"

And Regulus reached out his hand.

Sirius was on the floor of his bedroom in Grimmauld Place. He wasn't more than nine years old. He'd stolen a wand— though saying he'd stolen it was an overstatement, as everyone in the family turned their backs to underage magic with a wink and a shit-eating grin— and he'd tried to cast a spell to turn the whole of his wall into a window so he could better see the city below. The whole house had shaken, at first as if to obey him, then as if to reprimand him.

A shock of pain sent him to the floor and he lay there, unable to move, but able to scream.

His throat hurt with screaming.

It was Bella who reached him first. She'd been dressing for dinner, and she hadn't finished yet; she wore only black underthings Sirius couldn't quite name. She hadn't bothered to pull on her robes when she'd run to him.

Her arms were bare when she gathered him against her chest (budding breasts barely covered by her thin black camisole). She told him that everything would be all right, that they could fix anything, that whatever he had done to make the house shudder, she was more than impressed.

Her hair, long and loose, fell around them both.

Sirius was only nine, and Bella was his cousin besides, but he knew that she was beautiful.

Regulus, whose room was just across the hall, came next, dragging their mother along with him.

There was scolding, and there was finite incantantem, and Regulus held his hand while their mother cast something-or-other on Sirius that made his limbs want to work again.

The first thing he did was wrench his hand out of Regulus' and twist free of Bella's embrace.

Then he brought the sword down on top of Regulus and there was a long scream.

Sirius didn't know whether he was screaming in the past or whether he was screaming in the present or whether the locket was screaming.

When he looked properly at the locket, it was in pieces and the stained silk lining was smoking slightly.

Sirius felt his knees go weak and he stumbled before he let himself sit on the floor and bury his face in his knees.

"Well done, Sirius," said Remus in his ear. He could feel that Remus had sunk to the floor beside him, but he wasn't going to look up. He was going to make a mental list of the books he wanted to borrow from Dumbledore. He didn't care about any of the knitting books, but he thought he would like to read The Transfiguration of Stephenson Palace and maybe skim the Transfiguration Today anthologies.

Harry was talking, and he sounded very far away. "Thank you for helping us, Kreacher. This locket— it was the one Regulus used as a fake that night. Would you like to have it?"

The elf let out a howl. Maybe Kreacher had been the one screaming all along, not Sirius and not the locket. Maybe it was Bellatrix who had her arm around Sirius' shoulders and not Remus.

No.

For twelve long years, the dementors of Azkaban had told Sirius where he was and where he wasn't. The dementors of Azkaban were gone.

Sirius straightened his back and used his wand to conjure a handkerchief to dry his eyes.

"Is it dead?" he asked Remus.

"I'm positive. Yes," Remus confirmed.

It was quiet again. Harry had repaired Regulus' false locket and strung it around Kreacher's neck. The house-elf looked mollified, if a bit waterlogged.

"Kreacher," said Sirius roughly. "Now that you have destroyed the locket as Regulus asked, can you tell us how Regulus came to have it in the first place? We want the same thing Regulus wanted, you see, and knowing more about what he did might help us."

Kreacher looked at Sirius in a way that was entirely new to Sirius. The loathing, while present, was no longer absolute.

"Master Regulus came down to the kitchen to see Kreacher. He said that the Dark Lord required an elf. He said it was an honor for him and for Kreacher, who must be sure to do whatever the Dark Lord ordered him to do, and then to come home.

"So Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord did not tell Kreacher what they were to do, but took Kreacher with him to a cave beside the sea. And beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great black lake… there was a boat… there was a basin full of potion on the island. The Dark Lord made Kreacher drink it… And the Dark Lord sailed away, leaving Kreacher on the island.

"But Master Regulus had told Kreacher to come back, and Kreacher obeyed. But when Kreacher told Master Regulus what had happened, he was worried, very worried. Master Regulus told Kreacher to stay hidden and not to leave the house.

"Then Master Regulus came to find Kreacher in his cupboard one night. Master Regulus was strange, not as he usually was, disturbed in his mind, Kreacher could tell… and he asked Kreacher to take him to the cave where Kreacher had gone with the Dark Lord…

"Master Regulus took this locket from his pocket." Kreacher gestured to the locket Harry had hung around his neck moments before. "And he told Kreacher to take it, and when the basin was empty, to switch the lockets…

"And he ordered Kreacher to leave without him. He told Kreacher to go home— and never tell my mistress what he had done—but to destroy— the first locket." Kreacher pointed at the remains of the Horcrux. "And Master Regulus drank all the potion— and Kreacher swapped the lockets— and watched… as Master Regulus… was dragged beneath the water… and…"

"All right, Kreacher," said Sirius. He didn't need Kreacher to complete the mental image for him. "Thank you."

Kreacher stared at him, ugly mouth agape. "Master has never thanked Kreacher for anything before."

Sirius, still drained and weak-kneed, bit his tongue hard to stop himself telling Kreacher that this was the first time he had ever been useful, and of course Sirius hadn't thanked him for being a spying, foul-mouthed little shit.

"Master Regulus used to thank Kreacher," the elf continued. "Before the hands dragged Master Regulus beneath the water…"

"I'll get Regulus out of there," Sirius promised before he knew what he was saying. "His body. I'll bring it home and bury it properly beside our parents."

And Kreacher burst into fresh sobs and bowed low before Sirius.

It was the first non-facetious bow Sirius ever remembered receiving from Kreacher.

He forced himself to his feet. "Tell Dumbledore what happened with the locket, will you?" he asked Harry and Remus. Without waiting for an answer, he transformed into a dog and bounded from the room, the castle, the school grounds.


It felt good to run, and he hated to transform back into a man to Apparate to the sea. Once there, though, he could become a dog to swim the short way to the tunnel that led to the cave and the cavern.

He wasn't really surprised when Remus caught up to him as he stood on the edge of the lake, staring at the throngs of inferi.

"I left Harry to speak to Dumbledore," said Remus quietly.

"Good," said Sirius. "You can help me burn the inferi while I summon my brother's skeleton. Or do you suppose he hasn't decomposed properly because of all the magic in the water? Or did the inferi rip him into pieces, first, before he even had a chance to drown? He wouldn't become an inferius himself, would he? Voldemort didn't know what he'd done, so he couldn't have performed the spell. I rather think Voldemort just murdered Muggle tramps and turned them into inferi before he left them here. And perhaps the occasional lucky Order member."

"I'm certain you're correct about that."

And Sirius remembered with a start the way Remus had stopped casting when he shouldn't have stopped casting as they drew the boat carrying Harry back from the center of the lake. "Who did you see?"

"Caradoc Dearborn. You know we never found his body. But— you remember his dreadlocks? Once I saw them, I knew it was him, and I studied his face and wanted to bring him with us to be buried, but—"

"But we were too busy keeping ourselves alive at the time," Sirius completed.

"If anything remains of Regulus, you can retrieve it. I will help you. But I don't think today is the day."

Regulus' voice, twisted by the locket, returned to him:

"Your rashness killed Lily and James. Your rashness endangered Harry. Your rashness is the only reason Harry didn't have a proper childhood, and you ought to know that at some level he despises you for it. You were never as clever as you thought you were."

"If I try one summoning charm, can you protect us if it doesn't work?"

"Yes," said Remus. "But one try, Sirius. After that, we think about how to do it properly. Regulus can wait a bit longer. It won't make a difference to him. But it will make a difference to Harry if you aren't home for Christmas Eve tonight and Christmas at Andromeda's tomorrow."

It was a reasonable bargain and Sirius knew it. "Are you ready?"

Remus raised his wand in response.

"Accio, Regulus!"

Sirius braced for the sensation of his brother's cold, wet corpse flying into his arms.

All that happened, though, was a stirring of inferi. Arms and legs and heads began to move, to rise, and Remus sent up a wall of flame. The wall of flame held the inferi back until Sirius and Remus were safely inside the cave.

"One try." Sirius echoed Remus' words. "Not too terribly rash."

"No," agreed Remus. "You've been quite clever and quite useful today. And you'd be very much missed if you weren't with your family tonight and tomorrow."

"You'll join us at Anna's tomorrow?" Sirius asked roughly. "You spent last Christmas at the school, and there are hardly any students staying this time around. You can get away for a few hours. This— if this was the last Horcrux, we know what comes next and this could be my last chance to have everyone I love together."

He felt ridiculous once the words had left his mouth. He didn't want to go to Christmas dinner. He wanted to sleep for a month until the Horcrux was no longer screaming at him with Regulus' voice and making him say things aloud that usually stayed in his head where they belonged.

But Remus pulled him into an embrace. "I love you, too, and I'll be there tomorrow."

It was something to hold on to, ten feet from the lake where Regulus had drowned.

To be continued.


Auxiliary Disclaimer: Kreacher's description of Regulus' death and some of the locket's dialog adapted with few changes from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Recommendation:

The Best Medicine by MarieKavanagh. It is story ID number 13456227 on this site.

Summary: Nineteen-year-old governess Ida Knowles is at her wits' end. Her eight-year-old charge, Sirius Black, is willful and disobedient at the best of times, but when he falls ill with dragon pox, she is driven to the use of the only weapon in her arsenal - fetching his mother, Walburga Black, which leads her to a surprising conclusion...

I love a good fic about the Black family dynamic before Sirius throws a wrench into the operation by getting himself Sorted into Gryffindor. Here's a short story that strikes a nice balance between Sirius being a difficult child and Walburga being… less than nurturing. The OC narrator has a good strong voice as well.

The author has several more Sirius-centric long one-shots. My other favorite is An Education, featuring Professor McGonagall teaching first-year Sirius a thing or two he definitely didn't learn at Grimmauld Place.