Chapter 5
Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon round it.
Everything was a blur: like waking up from a long, painful nightmare.
As Harry hobbled downstairs he heard a loud banging of pots and pans from the kitchen, and for one crazy moment he thought that Mrs. Weasley had come for a visit. Harry peeked in. There was no one there, except Snape.
Snape loomed over an assortment of saucepans on the stove, as if their contents were student potions about to be inspected and given a mark of T. His expression was a sour grimace, the kind that always appeared when Neville was about to create yet another spectacular explosion.
He rotated his wand in a circular motion over the largest stockpot: it started to steam and bubble in a very 'toil and trouble'ish manner. In his left hand, he held a kitchen knife, its blade large and shiny and undoubtedly sharpened to perfection. Harry wondered what sort of things that blade had already been tested on, and tried not to look at the contents of the pot.
Harry thought about sneaking back upstairs. But he wasn't about to be afraid of cutlery, so instead of staying out of Snape's sight, he leaned against a wooden chair. His attempt at casualness went a bit wonky when the chair scraped suddenly across the uneven stone floor and he stumbled a little, deprived of its support. So he propped himself against the kitchen table instead, running his hands over the surface roughened by a slicing knife, dented by small hexes, stained by tea and Fred'n'George's old graffiti. Craning his neck, he peered at the stove without moving any closer.
Snape didn't acknowledge his presence with anything other than a grumbled "Sit down before you fall down." He didn't even bother to glance round, just tucked his wand behind his ear and picked up a ladle. The knife glistened murderously in his left hand.
Harry gathered his courage. "What's that?" he asked, nodding at the ominously bubbling stockpot.
Snape eyed him. "What does it look like?"
Harry considered the possibilities and chose the most harmless. "Dinner?" he blinked hopefully.
"Half an hour." Harry's stomach growled as if on cue; Snape smirked in reply and added, "If you can survive that long."
No one'd cooked for Harry before. There were Weasley family dinners and house elves at Hogwarts, but no one'd ever cooked a full meal just for him. Certainly not the Dursleys. Of all people, he'd never expected Snape to be the one to do that for him: he'd expected Snape to kill him, for making a complete mess of destroying the last Horcrux, but cook for him? Never.
"What's for dinner then?"
Harry didn't think Snape would answer him at all, with his nose in the boiling brew like a cartoon witch from a children's book, but then he finally said: "Stew. My mother's old recipe."
Harry thought of the photo Hermione found, and decided he didn't trust Eileen Prince's stew any more than he trusted any of Snape's concoctions.
"Need help?"
At first, Snape glared at Harry as if he'd grown a second head. Finally he grunted and thrust the knife and something else into Harry's hands: some sort of thin, pasty roots that looked like they'd been plucked from the ground a minute ago, dirt and all. "Clean and slice these, then start grating the cheese."
Harry cleaned the roots but eyed the chunk of cheese on the counter – solid as a brick and a bit mouldy around the edges – with apprehension. He really hoped it hadn't been kept in the cupboard all this time, since last year or even before then.
The stew turned out to be decent after all. Or perhaps Harry was hungrier than he thought.
oOo
"So," Harry asked, "Why've y'been acting so strange the past few days?"
Snape hmphed. "I'm 'acting strange'? Project much, do you, Potter?"
What's he on about? Normal people don't ponce about pretending to be Malfoy's mum. Harry waved his spoon. "First you ask weird questions, then you do all these crazy things without explaining, like pushing me around and dragging me places. I'm not the one off his chump." He struggled for explanation, and then a suspicion dawned. "Did you drug me?" It has to be! "You did!" Harry stared in horror at the stew and pushed away the bowl.
"I medicated you," Snape huffed. "And if you can't tell the difference, then your ignorance is your problem, not mine."
Medicated? But… that's mental! I wasn't sick or anything, just… Harry stared at his reflection in the spoon and that slowly brought back the memory of a ghostly image of himself in the mirror. "Oh." Harry dropped the spoon. Things slowly began to come together. "Was I sick?" Am I still?
"I'd hardly waste perfectly good potions on you if it wasn't strictly necessary," Snape declared.
Did they work? Harry frowned. Must've. "I don't feel sick…" He shrugged. "Huh. Thanks, I s'pose." Dunno why I bother thanking Snape. But just in case he has gone a bit weird, I probably shouldn't make him angry.
"Ingrate!" Snape barked. So menacing it sounded, Harry's hand trembled and sent his spoon flying off the table. "Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be alive? What the hell do you think about? Do you ever think? Merlin's balls, boy, when I was your age, if I'd meandered my way through life like you do, I'd never have lived to be my age! I'd've been slaughtered the moment I left school!"
So maddening it all was, from the very day Snape first showed up at Grimmauld. "I'm not a boy and I don't need you telling me what to do, so stop lecturing me! Voldemort's my responsibility and my fight, not yours." He just keeps coming round and teaching me and saving me and doing it all so much better than me without even breaking a sweat and it drives me mental! I hate owing him anything and he keeps making damn sure I do! "I'm not one of your firsties and I can bloody well take care of myself!"
"Oh, and what a wonderful job you're doing, too!" Snape's words dripped acid. "Let's count the ways, shall we? Half-mad. Cursed to be locked away and forgotten. Oh, and starved," Snape added, as if it was an afterthought. "Keep going like this, and they'll be carving 'I can take care of myself' on your tombstone!" Snape gave Harry a contemptuous glare, "Quite the hero."
"I'm not a hero, or your student, or one of your bloody Potions ingredients! You treat those sodding portraits better than me and I HATE it!"
Harry slammed the door, climbed the stairs and crossed the hall on shaking legs. His old mantra had returned but now it repeated on a single note: the key the key the key. Something Snape said stuck in his mind, and he had to be sure. Locked away and forgotten. The front door loomed, dark and terrifying, as if it too was waiting for Harry's touch to absorb his blood. The closer Harry got to it the heavier his feet and thoughts became. It was as if some invisible thread had stretched to its limit, not letting him past the threshold.
Even the feeble rays coming through the dusty fanlight were too bright. He walked toward the door until he couldn't walk any more, then he collapsed to his knees and rubbed his face, as if trying to clear the cobwebs out of his mind. There was something strange about his right hand: too plain, too bare. Of course! My life line… gone. The scar from where the key had scratched him was almost gone too. "What's happening to me?" It felt like he was breathing water. I am cursed, aren't I?
Snape stalked up and stood behind him; there was a big ironbound book in his arms, and a smaller one with a snakeskin cover stacked on top. "Fortunately, the house is protecting you. But it needs to keep you inside."
Snape spoke some more: "Oubliette", Harry caught. "Eremitical Seal". Descriptions of curses spun dizzyingly in his ears and eyes. Harry goggled at the picture of a Hermit looking up at him from the big book's musty page.
A stray image passed through Harry's mind – a dream he'd had: following 'Mrs. Malfoy' into the crowds at Knockturn Alley – and his heart jumped.
"Are you listening?" Snape snapped.
"'Course I am!"
"What did I just say?"
Harry shrugged. Words swam through his head: driven mad, wasting away, and other horrible visions of his future. "That everyone'll forget me," he finally picked the least horrifying. "Good."
"The world should be so lucky to forget about you," Snape scoffed. "But it's unlikely to happen any time soon. What I find hard to believe is that you're not throwing a fit about being trapped in this house until it lets you leave."
"I didn't say I liked it," Harry grumbled. "I can't kill Voldemort unless he decides to drop by in person for a little visit. That's pretty damn inconvenient."
Snape snorted. "Perhaps it's for the best. At least this'll stop you from finding any more dark artefacts and adding to your collection of curses in the process."
Nasty bastard just had to rub it in, didn't he? Harry took another deep breath in an effort not to respond. Instead of Snape, he directed all of his angry focus at the front door. The world outside that door seemed so harsh and wide and dangerous, it made him shiver with dread. In his mind he knew it was the curse acting, but that didn't make the irrational fear any easier to bear.
Harry clenched his fists and took a few firm steps forward, fighting the invisible leash that seemed to tighten around his throat, making it hard to breathe. One shaking hand wrestled with the doorknob – the metallic rattle was loud in the stillness – and he threw the door open and staggered blindly outside. Into the rain.
He stood there catching the drops with his tongue until the dizziness and disorientation felt unbearable, as if the rainwater was vodka and got him more drunk with each drop. Just a few days ago I wanted to hide here in Grimmauld all my life. I didn't even think then how limiting it'd be.
Harry shambled back inside and slammed the front door after him, shutting out the dizzying enormousness beyond. He sagged against the closed door and took deep breaths until his thoughts cleared. "If I give you the memory, will you be able to tell me what the key took from me?" He swallowed, "You said it needed a sacrifice, right?"
Snape nodded, but instead of replying aloud he simply fixed Harry with a mute, expectant stare, so Harry led him into the hall where a pensieve stood in a hidden niche in the wall.
It felt nice, giving that memory up, as if one of many weights had been lifted off Harry's shoulders. Snape bent over the bowl for a while, deep in thought, motionless as a statue. The pale light softened his features. The hair falling over his face made his nose look almost proportional to the rest of his head.
"What did it take?" he asked when Snape straightened up and stepped away from the pensieve. Harry took a deep breath and braced himself for the answer that he'd already half-guessed and dreaded: the largest sacrifice of his life had been stolen away, unnoticed.
"Your mother's protection." Snape answered softly. "It was in your blood. When the key scratched you and the doorway absorbed your blood, it burned away the last traces of the protective spell."
That was it: the final verdict. It hurt more than anything else Snape could've said, more than the grim future of living with the curse. That future hadn't happened yet, but this loss was final. Mum. It was the last trace I had of her. As far back as Harry remembered, he'd always liked to think of her as an angel, watching over him wherever he went, always with him. But as Snape said that, Harry finally realised just how lonely he'd been these last few months: that sense of someone watching over him had disappeared and he'd been too wrapped up in his solitary self to even notice. Harry felt like hiding his head under the tapestry again. "I never even knew her, but this is like losing her twice, and I can't understand why."
But I should've known! I should've realised sooner. Every time he saw himself in the mirror: every time he looked into it and refused to believe his eyes were turning duller and duller. Every time he paid less and less attention to the world around him, he lost her all over again; bit by bit, he'd let his last link to his mother slip away through his fingers.
Snape's expression was unreadable. "Paying attention means watching for trouble within as well as without." His hand settled on Harry's shoulder, squeezed briefly.
Harry nodded grimly, but his chest felt just a bit lighter after those words.
Snape stalked away to the corner, where the tapestry still lay in a rumpled heap on the floor after Harry had used it for a blanket. Snape Leviosa-ed it back up onto its hooks, and as its swaying folds settled, his fingers lingered on one of the countless names of Blacks. This one was right next to a scorched hole about the size and shape of Padfoot's ear.
"That's where Sirius' name was," Harry said, not quite out of spite. "I wish I knew how to mend tapestries."
Snape's fingers slowly stroked the neighbour name that remained intact. "It's fortunate then that your skills aren't that honed. Reg was pleased to have him gone. He never did like to share."
"Reg?" Harry echoed, 'cause it sounded strange to hear Snape say it.
"Regulus Black," Snape replied quickly. "He was a year after me, in Slytherin."
'Reg', eh? Harry thought. He was awfully quick to correct himself. Wonder what that was about?
oOo
Snape had learned long ago not to search for Regulus in the face of every stranger, but as he entered the library, he couldn't help but stare at the profile of the young man there, bent over a book. The pose was so familiar, it made time rush back a couple of decades. Reg? …No, his rationality reminded an instant later, Regulus is dead and gone.
Potter was curled up in Regulus' favourite chair, looking right at home with a grimoire. About time he finally finished that homework: I assigned it to him ages ago.
There was something about his profile that made Snape's gaze linger. Familiar lines in that long fringe hanging over Potter's forehead, familiar twist of a smile. Regulus would've been about the same age as Potter when he died, too young…
Abruptly Snape turned away, stopping himself from looking for any more signs of resemblance. Regulus and Potter have nothing in common.
Regulus had a certain charm. A single look could imply a world of possibilities and leave Severus wanting to explore each one. Potter, with his gaping, flabbergasted stares, was an open book, the gaudy kind filled with illustrated nursery rhymes: much like the book in this library that had first told Snape how to counteract the key's curse. Yes, it was true that children's books had a habit of surprising adults, with their odd charm and unexpected wisdom. Potter, he told himself sternly, had neither.
Snape had only ever seen Regulus openly flabbergasted once: as Regulus had looked up at him from the plain locket cupped in his palm.
"You mean it's mine? To keep?"
"Yes. It was my mam's." Severus added dryly, "The Prince fortune." Or what's left of it.
Regulus' fingers softly caressed the smooth shell of his locket. His thumb pressed against the seam and snapped the halves open. There was no picture, no lock of hair inside.
Severus' neck felt bare without its comforting weight, but in a way, a great weight had lifted off his shoulders.
"How strange," Regulus said, tracing the soft sheen of the locket's worn gold case. "Dad's got a cursed one from one of the Founders. Every time I touch it, I can feel the magic bristle. But I've never seen one without any magic at all."
"It used to have some charms," Severus said. "They wore out before I was born." Just like Mam's magic. My dad has that effect on things.
Regulus smiled, smoothing out the chain, closing the locket and caressing it gently like a touchstone.
Severus' hands closed over Regulus'. "I just wanted you to have it," he said. "A present." The less Dad sees of it, the less chance he'll have to pawn it. It's in good hands now.
Potter looked up from his reading, bleary eyed. "Still here?" he mumbled. "Don't you ever sleep?"
"I could ask you the same question."
"Who, me? M'just reading."
The volume in Potter's hands was upside down; its bookmark dangled, wagging in amusement, from its inverted spine. Snape arched an eyebrow at the cover but didn't mention it. It's good that he's spending more time with the books, even if he isn't always reading them. They'll lick some sense into him eventually.
"OK, actually… um." Was that a blush showing on that pale face? "I don't want to sleep, just yet." Snape nodded and prepared to leave the brat to his books when he heard a mumbled admission, "M'a bit scared."
"'Scared'," Snape echoed, voice and face briefly blank with surprise before he resumed his familiar, snide mask. "The great Harry Potter, scared of something. Imagine that."
Potter snorted, but didn't rise to the bait. "I was thinking – and don't say it! – Anyway. What if I do fall asleep and the curse takes over again and Grimmauld Place won't be able to stop it?" he asked, glaring down at the book in his lap rather than at Snape. "It's frustrating, knowing I'm doing things all wrong but not knowing how to fix it." His restless fingers toyed with the frayed bookmark.
"You don't have to know how to fix it all now," Snape interrupted him, gruffly. "This Place will keep you safe, if you let it. It's stronger than you think."
Echoing him, the book Potter was cradling gave a reassuring rustle, its pages curling round his fingers.
"What you said once," Potter murmured, stroking the book's spine, "that I can't break this curse. That I have to fight against it. Every day. Is that true?"
Snape nodded.
"Is that what happened to Dumbledore? Did he get tired of fighting?"
And from then on, Dumbledore was as good as dead. "Yes."
I have to believe Potter won't suffer the same fate. Loneliness isn't the same as the curse that rotted Dumbledore's flesh, that would have turned him into an Inferius. Loneliness can be lived with. I should know; I've lived with mine all my life.
"Is that why you killed him?" Potter asked suddenly. His gaze was clear and just as disturbingly honest as it was when he was a firstie, but beyond that openness there was something intuitive and searching, so similar to the way Dumbledore's Legilimency used to feel.
But that can't be! The boy doesn't have the skill to cast wandless, wordless Legilimens!
"Did you do it out of pity?" Potter murmured. "Cause that's OK. I'd understand. I think."
Involuntary revulsion spiked through Snape as the gentle, wordless coaxing to reveal his secrets – to spill his guts – intensified. He stepped back as if the unintended mental attack was a physical invasion of his space. "You ought to pay more attention to your studies, instead of wasting your time questioning things that cannot be changed."
Potter scowled, and that insistent probing sensation was gone, as if it had never existed.
oOo
Snape must've exhausted his limited supply of 'nice', because halfway through the conversation the git was suddenly snarling more than the yeti skin in the hallway, and Harry hadn't even said anything too annoying to him.
"We are studying," Harry told him, gesturing at the books and the candles around them, hoping it'd make a difference. "When's the next lesson?"
"Why do you want to know? Are you getting bored, or is it your 'fan club'?" Snape glared at the candles clustered around Harry. When Harry simply shrugged and resumed reading instead of answering him, Snape bent down and snatched up the nearest candle. Its flame quivered at the unexpected capture as Snape lifted it to his eye level and gave it a shark-like snarl. "Even now, when you've got more important things to think about, you still have to be surrounded by admirers, don't you, Potter?" The candle wriggled in his grasp, scattering waxy sweat drops.
"Oi!" Harry only just managed to grab it out of Snape's hand before it died of over-exhaustion. "Get your own light!" he scowled at Snape, and turned to discreetly pet the terrified little thing.
Snape gave Harry the same snarl he'd just given the candle.
What's got up his dirty great nose? Harry groused to himself, Did a doxy fly up his robes and bite him on the arse? Anyone'd think he's jealous!
The candle hid helplessly in the crook of Harry's hand, its flame timidly starting to grow again. Snape glared irritably at it, then at Harry. Then he drew his wand out of his sleeve and gave it an arrogant flick. With an echoing fwoomph, every gaslight burst into full flame. Their blue flares gave the room the appearance of a mortuary. Harry squinted against the sudden glare. The flock of candles gathered in Harry's shadow, their warm yellow light seeming small in comparison. But Harry thought even the smallest candle was worth more than all the gaslights in the Place. The gaslights were always cold and aloof, with their hungry, creepy sounds: hissing like snakes, but with none of their meaning.
"Put 'em out!" Harry demanded. "I don't want the gaslights on."
"You shouldn't keep this house completely in the dark," Snape declared. "Who knows what might be lurking in it?"
Yeah, jealous sods like you! Harry glared, knowing Snape could see right into his mind with that focused stare, but beyond caring.
With a satisfied "Hmph," Snape stalked through the lit corridor, in all his billowing, shiver-inducing glory.
"Nox," grumbled Harry, and stood protectively over the candles until the gaslights faded with a sullen hiss. "Git!"
On the other hand, the thought of Snape returning to his normal gittitude was almost calming.
oOo
I must've been mistaken. Snape decided. No one that hopeless at Occlumency could manage Legilimency at all, much less nonverbal, wandless Legilimency.
In his attempt to escape the memory of Dumbledore haunting him so belatedly, Severus walked all the way up to the top floor, to the small observatory on the roof. The wizard space of the observatory loft was so much wider than the attic below. Stars shone overhead, brighter than anything visible from streets shrouded in Muggle smog, dazzled by electric lights. A spidery telescope shrouded in cobwebs stood in the corner. Snape reached for a smaller one, lying on the table along with Walburga Black's doxy-eaten gloves. There was also a bottle of ink – long gone dry – and a quill, resting on top of a pile of star charts. Snape traced the dot marked Alpha Leonis on paper before ever finding it on the sky.
'Have you ever mourned him?' Walburga had asked. Severus could never decide what Regulus was to him to mourn the exact loss – he just knew that the loss was terrible: too terrible to think about. A young boy with silver-grey eyes and a flash of a smile: a lion cub among jackals. No one recalls all the firsts in their life, but first loves – and first griefs – make marks every bit as permanent as the Dark Mark.
Regulus and he had shared so many firsts, among themselves. That first glance that began it all, and Regulus' morbid sense of humour that prompted a smile of affection on Severus' face all too often, then a bed – where that affection eventually led them – and finally, thanks to Orion Black, the Mark. An apprenticeship, they were told, but Severus knew better by then. It was a cult, dark and powerful, the kind you stood with or stood against: anyone trying to merely stand aside from them would be trampled to death. And there was no way that Severus – a half-blood with no family and no fortune – could hope to stand against them. The Dark Marks connected all the new initiates into one great circle and no one noticed that in it they were also linked to each other, for better or worse. No one cared because ultimately all the Marks were connected to the Dark Lord, as Mr. Black's associate called himself.
It didn't take Severus long to see that the pain came nonetheless, to Goyle, to Lestrange, to Regulus and then to Severus, echoing on and on around the circle. Their parents, uncles, brothers watched from the sidelines, cloaked. "Discipline," they called it. "Order. Lessons. Brotherhood."
For five delusional days Severus tried to think that there was something else connecting them all, besides shared pain. Then Regulus ran, before Severus could plan his own escape.
And then Regulus was killed. Severus knew the exact moment, because the terrible backlash from Regulus' pain hit Severus full blast through his new Mark. The force of it must've propagated through the entire circle of new initiates when the intended target had no life left in him, but it reached Severus just a fraction of a second before everyone else, and part of Severus died with him.
It wasn't Voldemort who killed Regulus, not in person, but he might as well have done so. Because at the precise time Regulus died Severus had looked into the Dark Lord's eyes and knew exactly who had ordered his death. Severus' tentative, slithering Legilimency skills were finally shocked into their full power by the painful truth: Regulus was dead, because the Dark Lord had wanted him dead.
Regulus had so much to offer this world, but he never had the chance to become the Alpha Leonis that Walburga named him after. He simply lived to be the part of Severus' life that, like all good things, was too good to last. After a while, Regulus turned into the memory of a beautiful dream that Severus might as well have never had at all, a dream he failed to protect: bright but distant, like the star bearing his name. Every time Snape saw Sirius Black afterwards – the one so close, the one who lived – he lashed out for all the right reasons, and sometimes for the wrong ones too: just because he saw a twist of a smile whose slyness reminded him painfully of his loss. Other times, he searched for Alpha Leonis in the night sky and remembered that just once in his life, he'd had someone to love, someone to watch over, someone who understood him better than he understood himself.
'I'd understand,' Potter had said. He understood nothing.
Regulus would never have had to state the obvious.
oOo
There once was a time Harry asked himself What would Dumbledore do? But that wouldn't help him now. Dumbledore was gone.
If he kept thinking of Dumbledore, he'd only dig himself deeper and deeper into a pit of despair, and he'd already lost so much time. He'd let himself get distracted while he still had a job to finish: one more Horcrux to find.
The entire world depended on him, counted on him to do it. He had no idea where to begin. And what was worse, he was stuck here, in Grimmauld Place with no way out. Harry stared into the Potions textbook, which had become a placeholder for all his notes. What would the Prince do?
Somewhere he could almost hear Snape's insistent, soft tones: "He'd tell you that you need to drink this, and eat more than a mouthful, and get some sleep."
Right, Harry thought, What would Snape do? Probably use every resource he's got, and examine them thoroughly. So then… Harry reached into his pocket.
The locket Harry had found by Dumbledore's body was plain and smooth, the coppery colour of low-karat gold, with the velvety glow that only comes from generations of handling. It was covered in tiny scuffs, especially in the centre, as if someone – or several someones, sensitive or nervous, thinking with their hands – had the habit of rubbing it like a touchstone. Several of the links in its heavy chain were dented or twisted a bit, as if the chain had been yanked on more than once, tangled by childish hands or brutal ones. In one place the chain was knotted, which was a bit odd since the chain had no clasp and it would have to be broken to tie – or untie – that type of knot. There was a note folded inside the locket; Harry'd read it a dozen times.
I know I will be dead long before you read this,
So many times Harry'd wondered, What about R.A.B.'s own secret? Who was he? Where did he take that Horcrux?
I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more.
Harry stared at the mysterious note. What did he do with the Horcrux locket? Did he destroy it? Hide it?
The bitey grimoire Snape had once given him for homework nudged his elbow. He glanced down at it. It opened itself to a page with writing in the margins. At first glance Harry almost thought the page had been torn out of his Potions textbook: the Prince's cramped, spiky script was that familiar.
Jarvey saliva adds compulsive swearing to the potion effects!
That's brilliant! a different hand had added below. Just clean the ink off your nose before you leave the library.
And lower, in the Prince's handwriting again, Sod off!
For once it wasn't the Prince's words that caught Harry's attention. The handwriting on the mystery reply looked slim and delicate, with a sharp twist to its loops.
Harry opened the locket again, took out the note folded within. It had sharp twists but the loops were hurried and although the handwriting was similar – just as thin and small – Harry wasn't quite sure if it was the same person who wrote it. As he moved, the Prince's textbook shifted in his lap and a bunch of folded notes fell out. Among them were the paper swan and swallow he'd found under the curio cabinet. Harry set the swan aside but kept looking at the swallow. One wing had a rough edge as if it was torn from a larger sheet of parchment, light and thin. The feel of the parchment reminded him of something. Although the note had no signature, it struck him that he'd seen that spindly handwriting before: the unusual 'I's that looked like 'J's, the looped 'L' whose final stroke underlined the following letters.
Harry remembered Walburga's hushed explanation to her young son. Little kings. One of them has to be Regulus. That's what she said 'Regulus' meant: prince. Prince. Wait, the Half-Blood Prince?
…I know I will be dead long before you read this…
That S. on the note! Why didn't I think of it before? Regulus wasn't writing to Sirius, he was writing to Snape!
From one little king to another…
Harry stared at the swallow's wing, then at the swan found with it and suddenly saw it in a completely different light. They'd both carried something, he realised. Something that had been stolen from them.
Harry couldn't believe his eyes. He'd roamed this house a thousand times, he'd even watched the cursed artefacts sneaking back into the curio cabinet, one by one. He'd definitely seen and read (and, he dimly remembered, been enveloped by) the Black family tapestry, now back up on the wall. How could he have missed that Regulus Black, Sirius' younger brother, had the same initials as the note inside the decoy locket? Why hadn't he thought of the locket they'd found in Grimmauld's cabinets that hols, two summers ago? He could remember that time, when Sirius and Dumbledore were both still alive, as clearly as yesterday: Sirius and the twins were clearing out the rubbish left behind by a long line of Blacks, cleaning the cabinets in the drawing room. Everyone had worked and grumbled and grinned, and all his friends were whole and well and with him. And among all the dusty bits and bobs, there'd been a heavy locket, that none of them could open.
Harry smiled grimly; it was as if he could almost hear the last piece of the puzzle sliding into place. Lucius Malfoy kept the diary at Malfoy Manor. The Lestranges had the cup in plain view: on their mantelpiece, like a bloody Quidditch trophy. What if another Horcrux has been here all this time, in another old Pureblood home, right under my nose? That's it! It has to be!
Because if it wasn't, Harry had no idea where else he could look.
Harry glanced at the writing desk in the corner and immediately his gaze strayed to the drawing room. The barest hint of pre-dawn grey seeped through the gap in the curtains.
He stole as quietly as he could past Mrs. Black's portrait in the corridor: he'd never been less eager to waken it. He entered the drawing room, treading softly to avoid disturbing dust or doxies, intent on searching the curio cabinet there.
He saw a ring, which the parchment swan had been intended to carry from the library to the kitchen, but he gave it only a passing glance, for there were other things in there as well that hadn't been there before. Behind the spidery instrument, some tarnished old seals and a musical box Harry didn't dare to touch again, was a locket. The locket that no one could open. Harry thought he knew now why that was.
But there was only one way to find out for sure. A vision flashed through Harry's mind: Dumbledore's blackened hand, and a ring with a cracked black stone on his withered finger. Drawing a deep breath, he reached out…
Harry paused, pulled back, and rubbed his sweaty palms together as if getting ready to catch a particularly difficult snitch.
Wait. An image flashed through his mind of Snape in the pensieve memory, berating him for not being cautious. Defensive curses. Contact.
Harry gave the gleaming artefact a determined frown. Then with two tugs he pulled the sleeves of his jumper over his bare hands, and only then clasped the locket, clawing at it awkwardly, his wool-covered fingers trying to prise it open. He scowled fiercely at it, with all the force of his burning desire to see Voldemort gone for good.
Even through the warmth of Mrs. Weasley's jumper, the Horcrux felt heavy and cold. Then it snapped open and a burst of green flame hit him square in the chest.
The locket's chain coiled round his neck like a python, cutting, crushing. White-hot agony wrapped his throat like the lash of a whip, like the slashing impact of a curse, the same one Snape used on Harry when he'd yelled: "Don't call me coward!", but worse, oh fuck so much worse, and this time the curse didn't end and Harry had no Buckbeak to save him and no Snape to save him either.
Harry smelled burnt fabric and saw the bare flesh blackening on his chest where the locket's fire hit him. He screamed, but only a wheezing sound made it out. He clawed at the chain in an instinctive attempt to tear the cursed thing free; but at the smallest movement the agony peaked so high he almost blacked out. Dimly through the nauseating waves of pain he realised that if he lost consciousness here, where no one else could hear him, he was dead.
He didn't know how he stumbled to the door or staggered down the hall, but nonetheless he was making his way across it. The locket, still dangling around his neck, seared him with every step. It was so hard to breathe as agony thickened in his lungs. This is the worst one yet. Oh shit!
"Help!" he wheezed. His throat tightened and it felt as if the locket's chain was getting shorter and shorter, slowly garrotting him. Unable to fight it any longer, he collapsed on the dusty floorboards. "Snape!" he panted; forced out of his lungs like this, the air burned. Snape!
Then there were hands all over him, and a persistent, deep voice in his ear. He was lifted and carried somewhere, the ring of agony around his throat ebbing to a dull throb. As the blackness closed over him, his last memory was of the sick stench of his own curse-corroded skin.