I drifted down the dark halls of my childhood home like a ghost, past the house elf heads staring endlessly from their wooden plaques, past my long dead family members dozing off in their portraits. I'd never paid them much attention before, but as I glanced at them for the thousandth time, it suddenly occurred to me how superficial, how depressing, and how utterly lifeless they were. Right now, I felt closer to these musty wall hangings than I did to my parents and my brother. Even Kreacher, who was probably sleeping in his kitchen cupboard, seemed like he was from a faraway world, unreachable.

In that moment, cold reality punched me in the gut. I was living on borrowed time. Sooner or later, my body would be no better than these soulless mounts, or these intricate layers of paint imbued with mere shreds of personality. When my choices inevitably caught up with me, I would be nothing more than a peripheral memory, rarely crossing anyone's mind.

The tattoo on my arm throbbed like an infected wound, an ink stain that marked me for slaughter. I knew I needed to hurry. Every minute I stayed at Grimmauld Place was another minute the Death Eaters might realize what I'd done and come looking for me. I couldn't afford to linger here and curse anyone else with my fate. At least if I was gone by the time they tried to hunt me down, Mother wouldn't be accused of sheltering me.

But leaving was a dreadful prospect.

On my way to my bedroom, I paused at Sirius's door. I hadn't been in my brother's bedroom since I'd warned him of Father's plan to force him to join the Death Eaters. That night, he'd gathered his things swiftly and without hesitation, like he'd been begging for an excuse to leave. Deep down, I wished that he wouldn't have been so keen. As infuriating as he was, Sirius's presence sent ripples through the dull, decorous monotony that was life at Grimmauld Place. I didn't think I would miss him until he finally left for good.

Now, nearly three years later, it was my turn to leave. I wished that I hated this place as much as Sirius seemed to. It would've made it easier.

Without really thinking, I turned the knob and wandered into my brother's bedroom. It still looked exactly as I remembered. (I assumed Mother had left it alone with the intent of erasing it from her consciousness, and by the state of it, she'd ordered Kreacher to do the same.) The walls were plastered with a comically horrid jumble of red and gold Gryffindor paraphernalia, with the occasional Muggle swimsuit model smiling flirtatiously down at me. A few old schoolbooks were scattered on the floor, along with whatever unwanted clothes Sirius had thrown from his drawers in his hasty packing.

The tornadic scene almost seemed like a memorial, a snapshot of that turbulent night. I could still picture Sirius standing in the doorway and putting his hand on my shoulder in some strange gesture of peace, or gratitude, or whatever that had been. "Thank you for the warning. I know you didn't really do it for me, but I appreciate it anyway," he'd told me. He'd thought I'd been being selfish – and in a way, he'd been right. I'd warned him in part so he wouldn't ruin my own plans to join the Death Eaters. But the more selfish move would've been to beg him not to go.

I paused, listening to the stillness of the house and my own tense breathing. Then I sighed, closed the door behind me, and started to clean. Even if I never set foot in this room again, I didn't want a memorial of that night to exist. There were much better nights to remember.

Organizing Sirius's chaos was oddly therapeutic. As I levitated the books onto their shelves and tucked the clean clothes into their drawers, I imagined what my brother might have said if he could see what I was doing: You're a menace, Reg. You're only cleaning my shit to procrastinate.

I'm always cleaning up your messes anyway, I would've sassed him. I might as well, while I'm here.

You're not my brother.

I winced as his words from earlier tonight slammed back into my mind. Fine, then, I thought wearily. I guess I'll be your house elf instead.

When I finished tidying up, I noticed that a small drawer on the bottom of his nightstand was ajar. I crouched to push it shut and hesitated. A glimpse of pastel colors piqued my interest. I opened the drawer further, and a wave of shock made me stare.

Inside was an assortment of familiar objects: the handsome hawk-feather quill that Father had given Sirius for his sixteenth birthday, an Enchanted game of jacks that we used to play with when we were kids, the toy wand that Mother had gotten him when he was seven (which he'd carried around with him constantly for a year), and about twenty other vaguely sentimental things. I gaped when I noticed an unopened Acid Pop from the rather awkward Christmas before his first year at Hogwarts. That was around the time he and I had started fighting, when we'd begun the admittedly entertaining tradition of getting each other awful gifts every Christmas. I spotted a few of my other gags: a box of all bogey-flavored Bertie Bott's Beans, a shiny silver pin with the Black family crest, and a single Knut, which must have been the one that I'd wrapped in ten increasingly large boxes. I was stunned.

He kept all this rubbish…?

Thoroughly absorbed, I sifted through the clutter to unearth what had initially caught my eye: a thin stack of papers on the bottom of the drawer. I carefully took hold of the colorful collection and brought it into the light. When I realized what I was holding, I felt faint.

I'd been quite the artist when I was young. I'd taken to drawing as a toddler, and I'd stuck with the hobby up until recently. As a kid, I'd tried making things for Mother and Father a few times, but they weren't as receptive as I'd hoped. That led me to turn to Sirius. He'd make requests every now and then, and he'd always seemed impressed with the result, given that he was only a year older than me.

And in my hands now was every stupid little doodle I'd ever drawn for him.

Floored, I paged through the collection as if it were centuries old and could crumble to dust at any second. There were a few doodles that I'd given to Mother too; maybe Sirius had saved them from being trashed. I paused at an image of two boys with a great black fur ball between them, from back when Sirius and I had been begging Mother to let us have a dog. The irony made me smirk. At least one of us succeeded, in a way.

Memories from that November night flooded back against my will. Ghostly pain made me tense as I pictured Bellatrix's enraged glare. I could still imagine a huge growling canine tackling her to the floor, the scene captured in still frame by a flash of red magic. "You can't tell anyone about this," Sirius had ordered me. "I'm trusting you with this, alright?"

What a strange concept that was. It must have been a moment of weakness for him – a rare exhibit from someone as stubborn as Sirius.

My brother certainly hadn't been weak tonight, though, when he'd turned me away and left. It wasn't easy to separate yourself from someone you've grown up with…someone who at one point was very important to you…someone you still cared about deep down. And I understood now that Sirius did still care – about me, and Mother, and maybe even Father. This intentional hoarding and locking away of seemingly trivial items couldn't mean anything else.

And yet, he'd left it all behind.

I supposed there could be courage in leaving.

Emotion welled up inside me, threatening to choke me. I gritted my teeth and swallowed those pitiful emotions. Dwelling on the past couldn't save me, and I couldn't afford to forget my resolve. The time had come for me to leave everything behind too. If nothing else, I could still keep my dignity.

With shaky hands, I returned the drawings to Sirius's drawer of memories. Then I pushed the drawer shut, sealed the door, and headed to my own bedroom, feeling slightly more substantial than before.

To my dismay, being in my own room disturbed me much more than being in Sirius's. I restrained the urge to blast my walls with a frustrated Incendio. It was all lies: the artful decorations in green and silver, representing the House I'd been so proud to be a part of; the family crest painted painstakingly above my bed, with its winding cursive slogan, "Toujours Pur"; the newspaper clippings of Death Eater attacks from my childhood. Together, these things each had a part in blurring the line between right and wrong. For a time, they'd convinced me that it was perfectly reasonable for my Muggleborn peers to be used as target practice for Dark Magic, for my brother and cousin to be disowned for their beliefs, and for my comrades to kill and torture in the name of Lord Voldemort. I felt surrounded, suffocated, like my walls were closing in on me. Shame and disgust churned in my stomach.

How could I have let things get so out of hand...?

I tried to console myself by remembering the few times my sense of integrity had kicked in. I'd stood up to Bellatrix when she'd stirred the pot at family gatherings. I'd stood up to Father when he'd attacked Sirius. I'd refused to kill Sirius and lied to Lord Voldemort after helping him escape. I'd been stricken a few nights ago, when Kreacher had returned home in an inconsolable state after I'd volunteered him for a mission.

My blood turned ice cold at the thought. Seeing my poor house elf curled up on the floor, sobbing and shaking, had finally pushed me over the edge. Kreacher hadn't asked to be put through such an ordeal. It was only due to my foolish desire to make up for my previous failure that I'd surrendered him to Voldemort. Kreacher had been ignorant, proud, and happy to serve, just as I had been when I'd first joined the Death Eaters. And my so-called master had forced him to drink a potion that could've broken even the strongest of men. He'd even laughed as Kreacher suffered. Then he'd left him to die on an island surrounded by Inferi – but he'd made a grave mistake. He'd overlooked the fact that Kreacher's magic worked differently than mine and his. Even as the Inferi tried to drown him, Kreacher could still Apparate back to me regardless of enchantments and magical safeguards, simply because I'd ordered him to do so once he'd fulfilled Voldemort's request. It must have been the most fortunate wording of my life – and of Kreacher's life.

I'd spent the next few days isolated in my family's library, obsessively trying to determine what kind of artifact a wizard like Voldemort would want to store in a place so secluded and dangerous. "A locket," Kreacher had described through pearly tears. "Heavy and gold, with shiny green stones in an 'S'." Hours later, I'd been startled to find a matching sketch in a book titled Ancient Artifacts: Myths and Mysteries. Evidently, the locket had belonged to Salazar Slytherin himself, whom Voldemort claimed to be descended from. It had supposedly been passed down through his family.

That made sense, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing an important detail. Why would Voldemort go through such lengths to keep Slytherin's locket safe? If it was truly that valuable to him, why wouldn't he keep it on his person? Surely, that would've been the safest place for it, seeing as he was one of the most feared and powerful wizards of all time.

After two more grueling nights of research, I came across an unfamiliar term: a Horcrux. The definition had rattled me more than anything else I'd seen in those sinister books. Apparently, if a witch or wizard was powerful enough, they could convey a fragment of their soul into an item or even a living creature. The only way to fragment one's soul was to commit a supreme act of evil – namely, murder. That soul-fragment, the Horcrux, would essentially make its creator immortal. If Voldemort had managed to create one, he would be able to survive and rule over Wizarding Britain indefinitely, until someone destroyed both him and the Horcrux.

That revelation had swept away any lingering doubts I'd had about defecting from the Death Eaters. I couldn't stand by and watch while the monster who'd laughed when he'd tortured my house-elf became an all-powerful, immortal dictator. I now knew something that no one else knew – or at least I strongly suspected it – and the dreadful weight of that knowledge ate away at me more than any of the other horrific acts I witnessed. After being rebuked by my brother for permitting those acts, I'd felt like I no longer had a choice. I couldn't just run and hide. I had to do something. I had to redeem myself.

And if I was going to fight back, my first order of business was to retrieve that locket – even if that mission would end in my death.

A familiar sickening wave of fear washed over me, but this time it was chased away by a weary voice in my head: You knew that leaving the Death Eaters would kill you sooner or later, and you've already accepted that fate. So, why not sooner? At least this way you won't die a coward.

I took a deep breath and fished out a small velvet-lined box from one of my drawers. Inside was a sturdy oval-shaped locket about the size of a Galleon. The old-fashioned memento was plated in gold, with the Black family crest etched faintly on the front. My maternal grandmother had bequeathed it to me in her will, believing (correctly) that I'd appreciate it more than Sirius would've. It was a fitting substitute, I thought – a gift from my family to Voldemort's. It felt almost like I was redeeming my whole family line in one go. What could be a more poetic betrayal?

Emboldened by the thought, I fetched a quill and a small piece of parchment, and I started to write: To the Dark Lord. I hesitated, wondering whether I should've written out the name "Voldemort" instead. Deciding it didn't matter much, I pushed on: I know I will be dead long before you read this, but I want you to know it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match, you will be mortal once more.

I read over the message twice. Satisfied, I started to sign it, but I stopped before I'd even finished the R. Would adding my last name endanger the rest of the family? I supposed I'd already done that with the crest. Then I realized that whether Voldemort recognized the family crest or not, it would be quite obvious who wrote the note. The fact that I'd just deserted, combined with my relationship to Kreacher, would certainly give me away. No one else in my immediate family would've dared to do such a thing...except maybe Sirius.

I supposed I'd better make it clear, so I carefully lined out my initials: R.A.B.

As I read over the note one last time, the weight in my chest seemed to lighten. I could only interpret that as I sign that I was doing something right. Determined to follow through with my plan, I folded up the note and secured it inside the Black locket. Then I crept downstairs to ask Kreacher one last unspeakable favor.