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Chapter Seventy-Five: Regulus's Shame

"Ouch!"

Harry shook his head and tried not to laugh as Draco went sliding off his bed, hitting his temple on top of the mental hurt he'd taken. He slid off his own and extended a hand, only to be stopped by the boundary of the rune circle Draco had drawn to keep his body safe while he was possessing Harry. "Are you all right?" he asked, when Draco picked himself up off the carpet and glared at him.

"You didn't say that you were going to do that," Draco snapped, shaking out his robes. He felt the side of his head and winced, and part of Harry's amusement melted.

"I am sorry," he said, and then visions of what worse wounds Draco could take on Midsummer Day touched him. "But if you can't ride out a Legilimency attack while you're possessing someone else, then I think this plan isn't going to work."

Draco looked up at once. "And who else would help you, you idiot?" he muttered, his fingers still on the lump on the side of his head. "Unless you have a centaur who can possess people waiting in the wings…"

Harry shook his head. "I didn't mean it that way, Draco. But you know that everything has to work for this plan to succeed. If you can't possess me while I use Legilimency on you, then that's not a bad reflection on you, but I'll have to find some other way to accomplish what I want. Because you're right. I have no one else who can play the role that you do in the battle."

Draco glanced up quickly. "That sounds as if you mean more than just a person who can possess people, Harry."

"I do." Draco had been like this since the meeting on the equinox and the announcement of their joining. At certain moments, he would demand evidence that he was important to Harry, and for more reasons than just battle tactics. Harry held his eyes, not smiling. "I need you there when this battle begins, Draco, for moral support and because I can't imagine pulling off something like this without you. I'm hoping to defang Voldemort and destroy most of the Death Eaters and show the wizarding world that the magical creatures can fight beside us and free the northern goblins all on the same day. If you weren't there, I would fail, simply because I wouldn't trust my own strength."

Smirking, satisfied, Draco nodded and stood. "Then I'll work on this some more," he said. "Just let me retrieve my wand and heal this wound first."

Harry nodded, and waited. He could wait, he told himself. It was only the beginning of April; they still had almost three whole months before Midsummer arrived and there was no more time to practice. He had no reason to feel as if impatience were gripping him by the throat and driving spurs into his sides.

But he did. And when he and Draco were finished here, then he had something else to study.

Zacharias Smith had never been so insulted in his life. Really, who did Harry think he was, asking a question like that?

Well, he thinks he's a vates and incipient Lord, and he's probably right, the voice of his training answered him, and Zacharias had to admit he was correct. But he still did not have to be so insulting.

"Of course I can ride, and of course I can ride more than brooms," he told Harry stiffly. "And no, before you ask, I have some experience with ordinary horses, too, not just winged ones. My family raised me properly, Harry. Light wizarding families once did a great deal of their fighting from horseback, you know."

He stifled the temptation to ask why Harry was smiling like that. Besides, in a moment the smile went away, and Harry nodded gravely. "Who are the other good riders in the school? Do you know?"

Zacharias sniffed. "Of course, Harry. The Smiths weren't the only pureblood families who patronized the institutions I attended before Hogwarts, you know. I know the best riders in Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and I can make a good guess about the Gryffindors—at least, if they've kept up their skills." He glanced around, but though there were more than a few people lingering in the latest abandoned classroom where they'd held the dueling club, there were no other Slytherins. That meant he was free to add, "And you can ask about your own House. I had little contact with Dark families as I was growing up. My mother didn't think it proper."

"Your mother sounds a formidable woman," Harry mused.

"She is," said Zacharias unrepentantly. His mother had largely raised him; while his father was the one who'd taught him skills like riding a broom and some of his earliest spells, his mother had passed along the Smith family traditions to him, and taken him to attend sessions of the Wizengamot, and sent him to be instructed in riding and other necessary means of claiming his title. "I'll tell her you said so. She'll take it as a great compliment."

Harry nodded. "So you'd be willing to go forth into battle on Midsummer Day, then? Riding?"

Zacharias felt a great surge of satisfaction. He would never be so rude as to show it—one thing pureblood Light heirs did not do was complain about petty things—but he had resented the fact that the Slytherins and his Dark allies received so much attention from Harry. He had attended the alliance meeting, of course, but Harry had paid him almost no personal attention. He supposed Harry felt sure of the Smiths' support, while he needed to spend some more time on securing those uncertain allies who still wavered, but he had fumed about it all the same. "Being felt sure of" had felt an awful lot like "being taken for granted."

And now here was personal attention, and he hadn't even had to complain to receive it. Harry had or was going to have horses for the battle, and he had, quite sensibly, thought that Zacharias, as a pureblood Light wizard, would know how to ride. He wasn't going to insist on leading the riders himself, which Zacharias was privately grateful for. Harry might be unsurpassed on a broom, maybe even on a dragon, but he'd shown no sign of skill on horseback.

That Harry was asking for help soothed another fear that Zacharias's mother had voiced to him: that this was a leader who did not know how to delegate. Obviously, he was learning.

"I would be honored," said Zacharias, when he realized that some moments had passed and he hadn't given an answer to Harry's question. "And I'll start approaching some of the other good riders. I know that Chang would be willing to give up her life, at least, and as she owes you a life debt, that's quite proper, but others will need to ask permission of their parents."

Harry nodded. "I know it sounds strange," he said, "sending children to battle against a Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. And if their parents are good riders who would rather go into battle instead, then I'll be happy to have them. But others—I don't know if I have enough time to bring other people I trust into this alliance, get them to trust me, and then insure that they can ride well enough to go forth into battle."

"I am not a child, Harry, at least," said Zacharias stiffly. "Remember that my family keeps the old age of majority, at fifteen."

Harry actually swept him a little bow. "I did forget. My apologies."

Zacharias relaxed. "The horses are a new addition to your plans, aren't they?" At Harry's nod, he added, "I can ask my mother if she'd be willing to participate, though I'm almost sure she will be."

"Thank you," Harry said, and then he grinned, and then he was gone. Zacharias felt relaxed and elated for a long time after he left. When Harry wasn't on the brink of losing his temper and thrashing someone else to death, then he did make an inspiring sight. Zacharias would be happy to ride for him.

He got a firecall from his mother that evening. Miriam Smith was more than willing to go into battle, if her son called her.

Zacharias went to bed thinking that all was right with the world, since his day had also included a kiss from Hermione, and his confounding her with a pureblood ritual she didn't know.

Harry turned the sheathed knife over in his hand thoughtfully. He had started looking through the gifts he had received—from Lucius in the truce-dance and from his allies for Christmas and his birthday—and had found one that might be perfect for his plans.

He drew the knife from the sheath on a sudden whim, and held it up to the light that came from the lamp on his bedside table. The blade glittered at him, a sharp golden contrast to the dark hilt. Adalrico had given the blade to him for the Christmas in which Harry and Lucius had concluded their truce-dance, and the words he had spoken about it still rang in Harry's mind.

One of my ancestors fell in love with a Lady of the Light. But she would not have him, which is not surprising, since he was Declared Dark and had aided the Dark Lord that Lady defeated. He created this knife to symbolize what he could not have. The hilt is forged of the same rock that makes up Blackstone's walls. The knife blade is sunlight that he captured on a Midsummer evening—the last ray as the sun sank beneath the horizon on the day of longest light.

Harry half-wished he had remembered this blade last year. Then he could have used, it perhaps, to fend off the loss of his hand.

Or could he have? Voldemort's power at the moment of sunset on Midsummer last year had been absolute. He might only have bound Harry as he already had and then taken the knife. Harry shuddered to think of it in Voldemort's hands. Perhaps it wouldn't have aided him—Adalrico had said that the knife's Light blade was unhappy in the hands of a Dark family like the Bulstrodes, so it would probably have been even unhappier with the actual Dark Lord—but he could have corrupted it, broken it, found a use for it. Harry was now confident that Voldemort could find a use for everything, even those objects he ought to most despise. He'd break them down into their component parts and soil them, drain them for their magic, if he couldn't do anything else.

Now, though, it would probably be the perfect tool to aid him for a moment on Midsummer that Harry was rather nervous about.

He tossed the knife in the air and tried to catch it, cursing mildly as it spun through his fingers and onto the floor. He slid it back into its sheath and laid it across his lap, then muttered, "Here goes nothing," as he took out the stone from his robe pocket that contained the tainted magic.

It felt warm to his hand, and the tainted magic chose to manifest as a whisper in his head. Now it sounded like Voldemort's voice, now like Dumbledore's. Just now, it had adopted a warm, grandfatherly tone.

You could free me, you know. I would obey your will from now on, and only yours. I promise. I am tired of being cooped up in here. I want to be free. I would let you use me as you willed. Imagine yourself, more powerful than your mentor, more powerful that your magical ancestor.

Harry shook his head. He wondered if the magic's lack of imagination in tempting him was due to the Lords it had come from, or the fact that it just didn't understand him. It should have spoken about the good he could do, if it wanted him to free it. Power for its own sake repelled Harry. What in the world would he do with it? It was what he could use magic for that mattered to him.

He lay back on his bed, cradling the stone in his hand and staring at it. The knife shifted position, and he rolled over so that it slid onto the bed and couldn't stab him. He would not have a better chance than this for cleansing the magic, he thought. Blaise had had an argument with Ginny and was currently sulking in the library, and Draco was serving a detention with McGonagall for cheek. Just because he was Harry's boyfriend didn't give him the right to Transfigure teapots into tabby cats biting their own arses, as he'd found out.

Harry closed his eyes. He had thought of a way to do this that might work, if only by example. The phoenix web Lily and Dumbledore had placed in his mind had been supposed to strain impurities out of his magic. Harry doubted that had worked the way they thought, but phoenix fire was a symbol of purity. Perhaps he could use his own fire to burn out the soiled magic and leave behind the clean material.

Perhaps.

Harry took a deep breath and called the phoenix fire, concentrating on the shape of the flame. When he opened his eyes, he was looking through a haze of blue. Luckily, he'd already fire-proofed his bed and his curtains—easy enough to do without Draco and Blaise noticing, since Harry always cast his own cleaning charms on his bed anyway, refusing to let the house elves do the work.

He held up the stone in front of his face, wondering if it was his imagination that its warmth had increased since he called the phoenix fire. Then he passed the fire through the stone.

The shock was sharp, grinding, twisting, as if the knife had managed to stab him after all, and had gone straight into his belly. Harry gasped and curled up around himself, but continued forcing the flame into the rock. It felt as if he were burning the bones of the earth, or slowly changing them from stone to wood. Should it be this hard to burn something?

The impurities were catching fire. But as they did, they tried to recoil, flee for their existence, and they took the only escape they could, rushing up through Harry's hand and his arm. It made the snake venom he'd taken from Snape after the Chamber of Secrets seem like a pleasant experience.

Burn! Harry thought, concentrating as hard as he could, bending all his will to that single task. You can't find refuge in me, because I'm burning!

The blue flame sprang higher, and Harry was grateful he'd thought to add the fire-proofing charms to his bed's ceiling, too. Then he lost himself inside a world of pain.

He had expected resistance, not pain, but since he'd begun, he didn't want to stop. He didn't know when he'd have the hours alone to face this again, and now that he knew it was going to hurt, the anticipation would be worse the next time. He poured all his will forward, pushing through curtain after curtain of dirt and disgusting stickiness, oil and morbid heat, rotting flesh and rotting wood. He could do this. He needed the magic for his plans on Midsummer. That meant he had to burn it clean.

Duty and responsibility pushed him through what he could not have endured for his own sake. And Harry could sense the clean magic slopping free from the stain, and settling quietly into the stone. The purity of it, the sharp imagined scent, lifted up his heart. He could do this. He could do this. He gritted his teeth and pushed the fire more and more, burning the inner defenses. He thought he was about halfway through. Who knew? Once he was halfway through, and had consumed the thick core of slime at the center of the stone, perhaps it would become easier. Or perhaps the greatest push would be saved for the end.

He heard a distant voice shouting, but didn't recognize it. And anyway, he was in no danger of dying, just of pain, and he doubted that anyone could break through the phoenix fire to stop him. He went on pushing, though his arms shook with the effort, and he could feel the pain throbbing in his shoulders. The impurities were shoving further into his body with each minute that passed. He always burned them, and he was sure that he would consume them before they could consume him.

One of his own sheets abruptly wrapped around him, plunging him into darkness, and in the shock, Harry lost his hold on the stone. It fell from his hand. He gasped, then, as the agony in his arms hit him without the ecstasy of the burning to compensate. He rolled over, running his hand up and down the shaking muscles of his left arm.

"Idiot," Draco's voice was saying beyond the blanket, and Snape snarled, a wordless sound of agreement. "Where should we take him?" Draco asked, and Snape murmured something Harry couldn't hear. "No, you're right, Pomfrey probably couldn't handle it," Draco said reluctantly, and then Harry was picked up and carried.

He struggled for a moment. He knew his fire wouldn't hurt the person holding him—Snape, he thought—because of the charms on the blanket, but he resented this. He'd been doing all right. He could get down and walk, and he wanted to make sure the stone and the knife were safe—

And then the pain coiled down from his shoulders and into his chest, now that Harry was no longer concentrating on burning the impurities out of himself. He closed his eyes and called the fire again, intent on cleansing his body, inside and out.

Brief, hot oblivion took him.

"—don't know what to do to keep this from happening." That was a voice that it took Harry some time to identify. Then he opened his eyes in startlement, only to see thick cloth directly above him. Peter?

"I'm going to talk to him." That was Regulus's voice, sounding exhausted, but determined through the exhaustion. "I don't have a choice, anyway, and it's obvious that Severus hasn't managed to talk him out of this yet, nor my little cousin."

"I'd like to talk to him myself."

"All right, then."

The thick cloth got tugged aside. Harry realized it had been a sheet, and that he was lying in an unfamiliar bed, in the middle of a room that slanted slightly, and seemed made of metal. A faint resonance of magic walked up and down his nerves like fingers, and he realized he must be in Silver-Mirror. Only the pool of fire and the pool of wind, combined with the portraits, could make him feel this way. He sat up, and glanced at the chairs on either side of his bed.

Regulus sat on his right, Peter on his left. Peter smiled at the sight of him, but the expression was harder than Harry remembered seeing on his face since the first night when Peter had introduced himself. Harry stared for a moment. He had the impression that he was seeing the Death Eater side of Peter for the first time. He often saw it in Lucius and Snape, and he had thought it would appear the same in Peter. It didn't; this was not coldness, but hard, bright, ruthless determination, the resolve to keep going and endure no matter what happened.

He glanced at Regulus, and was alarmed to see that he looked haggard, and was holding his left arm at a short distance from his body. "Why haven't you gone into the picture yet?" he demanded, then coughed. His throat felt hot and dry, as if a scream had been burning inside it.

Regulus waved his wand, and a goblet soared over to Harry. He found that it contained water, which tasted of a faint sweetness. He sniffed a few times, but it didn't have a Calming Draught in it. And really, he thought as he put the goblet down and looked at the two men again, he should know them better than that.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Draco came back after his detention and found you burning," said Peter quietly. "He fetched Snape. He couldn't make you listen to him, but he did get the stone out of your hand and wrap you in the blankets, since he noticed those weren't burning. And then he brought you here."

"Why here?"

"This house is dedicated to fire as well as wind, Harry," said Regulus, stirring from his contemplation of his own arm. "The golden pool was able to wake you from your trance. You'd gone so far into your own phoenix fire that you were in danger of never coming back."

"I didn't know that was possible," said Harry, flinching a bit.

"It is," said Peter. "I suspected it, when I first realized what had happened after Fawkes sacrificed himself. There are old, old legends of people who witnessed a phoenix's rebirth being struck dead by the wonder of it, or mesmerized to the point that they never paid attention to anything else. We know those aren't true from having phoenixes live among us, but you have a phoenix's gifts within you. When we put you in the golden pool, it drew the fire to the surface, and forced it to mingle with its own flames. That freed you from the trance."

Harry wondered for a moment if that meant his own fire was gone now. But a gleam of blue along his arms reassured him.

"What you did, Harry," Regulus said, his voice empty and distant and sad, "was an extraordinarily stupid and selfish thing."

Harry suppressed his own immediate impulse to snap back. "I didn't know what was going to happen," he said quietly, when he had his breathing and his voice under control. "I didn't even know it would hurt. I thought I could burn the impurities out of the magic in the stone, and all would be well. Phoenix fire purifies."

"And why didn't you tell anyone that you intended to do this?" Regulus cocked his head at Harry, his gray eyes gone almost black. "At least Draco and Snape could have been on hand to make sure that you didn't hurt, or to stop you when the pain began."

Harry shook his head. "Because I didn't think it was dangerous."

"That doesn't excuse concealing it," said Peter, frowning. "Even if you thought it needed to be done alone—and I can see why having other people around would be a distraction—then you could have told Draco about it. Or Snape. I'm sure they would have respected you and left you alone if that's what you wanted, but at least they wouldn't have been entirely alarmed when they found you on fire."

Harry bowed his head. "I don't know," he said quietly. The decision he'd made seemed cloudy to him now, covered with its own scrim of dirt, like his vision immediately after rescuing Snape from the Chamber of Secrets. "I suppose because I thought they might not leave me alone, that they'd try to stop me."

"Did you have to do this now?" Regulus asked.

"The time until Midsummer is dwindling," said Harry. "I thought so, yes." He met Regulus's eyes. "Were you waiting for something like this? I thought you were going to go into the picture just a few days after the alliance meeting."

Regulus sighed and bowed his head. "There are things I needed to tell you," he whispered. "And it took me until now to work up my courage." He looked at Peter. "Would you leave, please?"

Peter stood, but his gaze, all compassion when he looked at Regulus, hardened again when he swept it back to Harry. "I still want to talk to you about not having a proper sense of strategy," he said, and walked rapidly up the slanting floor and out of the room. Harry blinked. Is he holding his left arm too? No, just a trick of the way he was moving.

"Harry. There's something I need to tell you."

Regulus's tone was enough to make Harry lose interest in Peter's departure at once. He turned around and waited, locking his arms around his legs in a defensive gesture he hadn't made in a while. He peered at Regulus over the tops of his knees.

Regulus smiled faintly. "You look like Sirius when you do that." Then he closed his eyes, and began to speak without much transition.

"The pictures here in Silver-Mirror lead to different places, Harry, I told you that. I didn't tell you that I went into one of them when I was sixteen. I don't remember the motivation. Raging curiosity, I suppose, or maybe loneliness. Sirius had had his confrontation with our parents by then and run away, and I was still trying to get used to being the only child of my mother and father as well as their formal heir; they'd disowned Sirius the moment they could see straight.

"I chose a painting you may have noticed the last time you were here, one with a crystalline blue door high in a mountain."

Harry concentrated, and did remember seeing such a picture. He nodded.

Regulus opened his eyes. "I wouldn't have been able to tell you this just a few months ago," he said. "For that reason among many others, I'm glad that you've decided to accept the Black legacy, Harry.

"Most of the notes about that picture just said that anyone opening the door would learn something interesting. I opened the door. I can't remember what I expected to find there, either. Maybe the secret to a riddle, maybe all the answers to the next Transfiguration exam; I was pants at Transfiguration.

"The door gave me a vision of a golden locket marked with the crest of Salazar Slytherin."

Harry gasped, despite his determination to stay silent and let Regulus tell the story. He recognized the description. That had been the ornament hanging around the neck of the partially transformed Sirius when Harry and Connor had faced him at the end of their third year. It had allowed a bit of Voldemort to possess Sirius, in some way. Harry still hadn't figured out how, and to be honest, he had no desire to. Sirius had fallen victim to the locket because he'd put it on. Harry never intended to be that impetuous.

"Yes," said Regulus softly. "That one. I didn't know what it meant, at first. The vision showed me that it was hidden in a cave, and what I had to do to get at it. I didn't understand why I would want to. It was protected by Inferi and a—a nasty potion. Why? It wasn't a treasure of our family, so no honor would require me to recover it, and unless we fell on incredibly hard times, I couldn't imagine needing the locket for money. It was something interesting, but only in purely abstract terms.

"I understood better, later. There was a—nasty evening—" Regulus swallowed "—during which I became better acquainted with the Dark Lord, and learned things he probably wouldn't have wanted me to see. But to accomplish the ritual he wished to work, he had no choice but to trust me, and avoid using compulsion or possession or Obliviate, anything that would have threatened my mind or my memory of the event. I suppose he thought the risk small enough. After all, why should I connect the vision of a locket important to him with anything in particular?

"He hadn't known I'd seen that locket before. And if I was a good little Death Eater, I should have told him at once. But I held it secret, first thinking that it could be more useful if I waited, and then deciding that I had to make some attempt to gain that locket, if it was important to him. By then, I hated him."

Harry was secretly impressed by the flex of Regulus's hands, the shine in his gray eyes. He didn't say anything else about the depth of his hatred. He didn't have to.

"I knew what I had to do to retrieve it, but it was an enormous risk. And there was the fact that retrieving it required me to—kill someone." Regulus pulled at a lock of his thick dark hair. "For a long time, I had nothing that could push me into doing that. I wasn't courageous like Sirius, or I would have gone to Gryffindor. So I hesitated, and waited, and thought that maybe something would happen to make me hate the Dark Lord less than I did.

"Then came Cardiff—"

"Will you please tell me what happened at Cardiff?" Harry surprised himself by asking. "Snape mentioned it to Adalrico Bulstrode, too."

Regulus made a careful motion of his head. "Sorry, Harry. I swore an Unbreakable Vow with Severus and Adalrico. None of us can talk about it unless all three of us agree to do so. And you'll have more luck dragging the secrets of Severus's childhood out of him. But what happened at Cardiff decided me. I had to go and get that fucking locket."

Harry settled back, knowing that he could hardly demand the secret when he'd kept his own, but simultaneously burning and eaten alive with curiosity.

"I suppose you'll laugh, given everything," said Regulus, and his voice had grown thick and heavy with reluctance. "But, by that time, I'd changed my mind about the killing and torture the Death Eaters did. I had my conscience back. I didn't speak out against it—I wasn't that brave—but I avoided it. Severus helped cover for me. I didn't know why at the time. Now I do. He had his own conscience back by then, and was spying for Dumbledore.

"To get past the guards on the locket, I took a Muggle along to the cave, and made him drink the potion, a horrible, horrible thing. He died from it, and it took him hours." Regulus bowed his head, his shoulders shaking. "I knew better by then, I believed it was wrong, and I did it anyway. That was what I didn't want to tell you, Harry. I sacrificed someone else's life for my own goals. I knew the locket was important to Voldemort, a trophy or a weapon, and I was determined to destroy it because it was the only one of his powerful weapons I knew the exact location of. But I didn't know how it was important, any more than Dumbledore knew exactly how forcing you into the guardian role would enable your brother to defeat the Dark Lord. So I committed the same error he did. You can blame me, hate me if you want. I wouldn't blame you."

Harry sat still for a long moment. "Who was the Muggle?" he asked at last.

Regulus shook his head, not looking up. "Just someone random I snatched off the street," he said. "I didn't even ask for his name."

Harry bowed his head to rest on his knees. "Well, blaming you won't bring him back to life," he said slowly. "And—it's not that I like it, Regulus, and if you did something like that right now I'd be horrified. But I still think it's not on the scale of what Dumbledore did. He sent Peter to Azkaban for twelve years, not even because of what Peter had done, but just to make sure that his tracks were covered. He set the phoenix web on me for nine years, and he never intended for it to be discovered or come off; I have Tom Riddle's possession to thank for the fact that I found it out at all. He molded Connor and my mother, and even my father to a certain extent—and Sirius, of course—to do exactly as he said, to obey and follow his every word. He Obliviated Remus when he made his first rebellion against that. He tortured the people at the Ministry with Capto Horrifer. And those are just the first of his crimes springing to mind. You made a sacrifice, once, and you hated yourself for it. He made them time and again, and he told himself all the while that he was doing right."

"Does that really make it better?" demanded Regulus. From the sound of his voice, Harry had found the edge of a deep pit of self-loathing. "Just because it was one person? And when I didn't even know what the damn thing did? And when it wound up costing my brother his freedom, his sanity, his life?"

Harry cocked his head. "You couldn't have known that would happen to Sirius, Regulus," he said softly. "You can't take on that much responsibility. And I suppose I have to take into account that I like you much better than Dumbledore—" that won him a quick, impossible-to-stifle smile "—and that this crime is old, while I lived through the consequences of many of Dumbledore's. That might be clouding my judgment. But I still think your sacrifice is not something you needed to be ashamed of and hide for this long. I won't think substantially different of you for it. I know the details of Adalrico's torture of Alba Starrise now, and I can accept that he's not the same man he was when he did that. I know one more detail of your Death Eater days, that's all. Though I'd still like to know what happened at Cardiff," he couldn't help adding.

"Ah, Harry," Regulus whispered. "That's the reason I said that your inflicting yourself with phoenix fire was selfish. I don't know what I would do, who I'd rely on, if I lost you." He lunged forward abruptly and caught Harry in a deep hug.

Harry hugged him back, a little stunned, understanding for the first time the depth of emotion that must have made Regulus keep silent about the Muggle's death for so long. He truly had been afraid that Harry would judge him, cast him aside with no chance for absolution. His body shook with relief now, and Harry held him close, running his hand gently down his back.

"Will you go into the picture to heal yourself?" he asked, when Regulus sniffed and drew back from him.

Regulus nodded, with a faint smile. "Yes. I expect to be gone for a while, Harry." He hesitated one more time, then said, "There's no harm in telling you this, now. I'm going to try to figure out what the locket was, exactly. From my viewing of your memories, the diary you destroyed in the Chamber of Secrets was something like it, of the same kind. Voldemort values them highly. I want to know what they are, what it means if we find and destroy them. So I'm going into two pictures, one to heal myself and another that might give me the answer to that question about the weapons."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "You could have done that without telling me the secret of the locket," he said. "What prompted you to confess, Regulus?"

Regulus retained the same faint smile. "You know me too well, Harry," he said. "That second picture is known by some in my family as the execution picture. It's killed people before. The world it leads to offers great treasures of knowledge, but only for a very high price."

"You thought you might die, and you didn't want to die with that weighing on your soul."

Regulus caught his eye. "Yes. And if I died, I wanted you to know why I died, Harry. I don't go to seek these answers lightly. I think they're important. And only the current owner of the Black legacy or his heir can enter the execution picture, and of course you can't go into it, since you're needed here."

Harry swallowed his protest. At least Regulus had told him. And he understood, now, a little better, why Regulus had so badly wanted Harry to be his heir. He now had someone to take care of his houses and the other parts of his legacy if he didn't return.

"All right," he whispered. "I agree."

Regulus smiled more broadly this time. "Thank you, Harry. When I'm out of this world, the houses will consider you their rightful owner, by the way, and you'll appear as Harry Black on the Ministry papers. But that's just an expression; you don't have to take my surname. When I come back, the Black name and the formal ownership will return to me."

Harry heard the plea in his voice, but held firm under the temptation to give in. Just as it was Regulus's choice to risk his life this way, it was Harry's choice to remain free of a family name for the moment. "All right," he said. "Thank you again for telling me."

Regulus hugged him, then, and held him tightly. Harry hugged him back, though he pulled away when he noticed the heat of the infected Dark Mark through the robe.

"Well, go away and heal yourself, then," he said.

"Thank you, Harry," Regulus said. "The last two years of my life have been the richest I've lived, thanks to you. I wanted you to know that." He bowed, and then swept out of the room while Harry still sat blinking.

He didn't notice how many minutes passed before Peter re-entered, carrying the stone filled with the tainted magic and the Midsummer knife. "He's gone," said Peter quietly, taking the chair he'd taken before. "He told me good-bye already, when he realized it was time to go." He put the stone and the knife on the bed, and then leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Harry's face. "And now we need to talk about strategy."

"You said that," Harry muttered. He picked up the stone. He could feel it filled with both pure magic and the taint. The coaxing, whispering voice of the magic in his head was not as strong now, but more deadly, more venomous, and Harry sensed that when he tried to drain the poison again, it would be more concentrated. "I didn't know what you meant."

"Well, now you should," said Peter. "You can't sacrifice yourself for a short-term advantage, Harry."

Stung, Harry jerked his eyes up. "The Midsummer plan isn't like that. It—"

"Might still fail," said Peter, turning so that he faced Harry in profile, studying him with just one eye, like a carrion bird. "If you hang all your hopes on it, it's likelier than ever to, because you'll pour all your concern into it and neglect basic defense. I think you should remember, Harry, that you need to live beyond Midsummer, and your dying there, even to rid the world of Voldemort, is not an acceptable price."

Harry frowned at him. "You really don't think that my death might be required to kill him?" he asked.

Peter snorted at him. "You forget that you're talking to someone who knows the full prophecy, Harry. It says nothing about that. And even if it comes true three times and chooses a different pair of candidates to fulfill the roles of elder and younger each time, it still doesn't say anything about death. I plan for you to remain alive. I want you to think that way, too."

"I do. I'm making plans for after the war. I'm entering a three-year courting ritual with Draco."

"Those are both wonderful signs," said Peter. "But you still might stumble because of your focus on the short-term. What happens after Midsummer? What's your next plan for fighting him?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "I suppose I might have to concentrate on the weapons that Regulus was talking about, but I don't know if he'll have returned by then." He closed his hand into a fist around the stone. "I don't know if he'll ever return, or when I should count him as dead."

"Two years," said Peter softly. "That's the longest any Black heir remained in the execution picture."

Harry nodded, his throat dry.

"So, you see," Peter went on, his voice implacable, "you'll have to think in the long term, Harry, and be flexible enough to have several plans going at once. Don't halt your vates work while you struggle to defeat Voldemort, and so on. Trust me." For a moment, a smile Harry had never seen before, part sneer and part twisted grin, slid across his face. "I learned to think in the long run while I was in Azkaban. If I'd thought solely of surviving one day and then surviving another, I would have killed myself. So I worked on the phoenix web, and imagined what I would do when I got out, if that ever did happen. I expected my friends to rescue me at first, when Dumbledore was so honored that no one would care about anything he did to secure the world from the Dark Lord, and then I had to adjust my thinking patterns when they never even came to visit me." A snarl showed in his voice for a moment, then faded. "So. Adjust your own thinking. Don't think that the pain you endure has to be alone, or that all of it is an acceptable price for what you might achieve because of it. Delegate. Get help. Tell us what you plan to do." He caught Harry's eye. "Remus told me that you're reaching out to the werewolves. Think of how long they've been suffering, Harry, and think that you might be their best hope. Think of what might happen if you die."

Harry winced. "Isn't that just forcing myself back into thinking as a sacrifice, though?" he asked. "Of living for other people?"

"Now you're thinking." Peter flashed his teeth in a bright, rat-like smile. "Not necessarily, Harry, because I don't want you to stop living for yourself at the same time. But don't stop living, please." His hand came down on Harry's arm. "I have selfish reasons for asking that, and I have reasons for Regulus's sake, too. Imagine what would happen if he came back and found you dead."

Harry shuddered and bowed his head. "All right," he said. "I've started asking for help, but I'll expand it to asking for help with the phoenix fire, too."

"Good, Harry." Peter touched his hand, and then stood up. "Now, I said I'd looked up legends on phoenixes. Why don't we go to the Black library—excuse me, Your Heirship, your library—"

"Shut up," Harry muttered, but without much force.

"And start seeing how one controls phoenix fire?" Peter finished cheerfully. "One old legend about phoenixes seems to apply to you. Others might as well."

It did, Harry had to admit, sound like a better idea than lying around in bed and worrying. He got up and followed Peter to go do some serious study.